The Religious Orders in England, Volume 3

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BY

DOM DAVID KNOWLES formerly Regius Professor Emeritus of Modern History in the University of Cambridge

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE LONDON • NEW YORK * MELBOURNE

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011- 4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, CapeTown 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1959 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1959 Reprinted 1961 Reprinted with corrections 1971 First paperback edition 1979 An abridged and illustrated version published under the title Bare Ruined Choirs 1976 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 521 05482 6 hardback ISBN 0 521 29568 8 paperback Transferred to digital printing 2004

CONTENTS

Frontispiece An ideal portrait of Prior John Houghton. The original is in the Museo Provincial at Cadiz, No. 73, labelled "Beato Juan Houghton". It is the work of Francisco de Zurbar£n (1598-1664), and was executed circa 1639 at a time when the master was painting the series of groups and portraits of Carthusian monks that made so strong an impression upon The'ophile Gautier. Though face and figure are ideal, the iconography of mature appearance, halter and heart show that the memory of the London Charterhouse was still green in Spain after a century, possibly owing to the influence of the longlived Duchess of Feria (see p. 227). Foto Mas Barcelona page Preface List of Abbreviations

ix xiii

©nt The Tudor Scene Chap. I.

The reign of Henry VII The changing scene—the black monies—the Franciscan Observants—fifteenth-century suppressions

3

II.

Some monastic activities Music and the Chant—building: the last phase—monastic printing presses

15

III.

The Cistercians

28

IV.

The Premonstratensians

39

The friars in the early sixteenth century

52

V. VI.

VII. VIIL IX. X.

Sixteenth-century visitations The Lincoln visitations—the Norwich visitations—from all quarters

62

Monastic personalities William Selling—Richard Kidderminster—John Islip

87

Humanism at Evesham

100

William More, prior of Worcester, 1518-36

108

Butley and Durham The Butley Chronicle—the Rites of Durham

127

vi

CONTENTS

$art Ctoo The Gathering Storm page XL

Erasmus

141

Reform and suppression under Wolsey

157

XIII.

European precedents

165

XIV.

Acceptance of the royal supremacy

173

Elizabeth Barton

182

XII.

XV.

Suppression and Dissolution XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII.

Before the Dissolution The outlook of the age—the plan of campaign

195

The end of the Observants

206

Syon

212

The London Charterhouse and its sister houses

222

The economy of the monasteries in 1535

241

Servants, almsgiving and corrodians

260

The visitation of 1535—6 268 The visitors, their aims and procedure—the course of the visitation

XXIII.

The Act of Suppression and the case for the defence

291

XXIV.

The dissolution of the lesser houses

304

The Northern Rising

320

XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII.

The last phase Some Worcestershire prelates—the last visitations

336

The attack on the greater houses

350

The suppression of the friars

360

CONTENTS

XXIX.

XXX.

The cankered hearts George Lazenby—Friar Forest and Friar Browne—Lenton and Woburn—the three Benedictine abbots

Vll

page 367

The transformation of the buildings

383

The new cathedrals and colleges

389

XXXII.

The disposal of the lands

393

XXXIII.

The treatment of the dispossessed

402

XXXI.

jfour Reaction and Survival XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI.

The Marian restoration

421

The old and the new

444

Epilogue

456

Appendix I.

Sir Thomas More's letter 'to a monk*

469

Religious houses suppressed by Cardinal Wolsey

470

III.

The witness of the Carthusians

471

IV.

Houses with incomes exceeding £1000 in the

473

II.

Valor Ecclesiastkus V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X.

The sacrist of Beau vale

475

Itinerary of the visitors, 1535-6 The commissioners for the survey of the Lesser Houses in 1536

476 478

The conflict of evidence on the monasteries

480

The last abbots of Colchester, Reading and Glastonbury

483

Regulars as bishops

492

Bibliography

497

Index

507

PREFACE The final volume of this history covers almost exactly the reigns of the five sovereigns of the house of Tudor. It opens with the accession of Henry VII which a universal, if not a venerable, educational and literary convention has long accepted not only as the beginning of what is called a new period of English history, but as the moment of transit between the medieval centuries and the modern world. Absurd as this convention may be, it has profoundly affected English historiography, and its influence has been felt all the more because the eighty-seven years between the death of Henry V and the accession of Henry VIII have come to form a kind of interlunary period shunned by 'medievalists' and * modernists' alike. In consequence, the dissolution of the monasteries has almost invariably been treated, both in outline histories and in monographs, by those primarily interested in the age of the Reformation, and their approach to it has been by way of a backward glance at the circumstances and tendencies that made, or seemed to make, the disappearance of the monasteries either inevitable or at least desirable. These writers have therefore done little to illustrate the manifold variety of character and conditions of life among the several religious orders in the forty-odd years that elapsed between Bosworth field and the fall of Wolsey. Froude and Dixon, Fisher and Gairdner, Gasquet and Baskerville, Constant and Hughes are all primarily occupied with and expert in the religious revolution of the i53o's. Their account of what went immediately before this in the monastic world resembles, all proportions guarded, the introductory chapter of a specialist monograph, which looks to the past for the traces and causes of what is to be the central theme of the work. Here, with the hope of somewhat redressing the balance, considerable space has been given to a review of particular achievements and activities of some of the orders and their representatives during the decades in question, when none could have foreseen the total destruction that was to come upon them so suddenly and so soon. For a different set of reasons, many of the historians who have dealt with the suppression of the monasteries have ended the story with the last surrender of 1540, or at least with the gradual disappearance of the pensioned survivors. They have inherited, in part at least, from their predecessors in earlier centuries, a concept of the English Reformation as something that put an end, once and for all, to the monastic institutions of the medieval church. Yet the Marian revival was at least a tail-piece, a coday to the medieval story, and it so happened that it provided a link, tenuous but real, with the reborn English monasteries of the CounterReformation, which have never since ceased to exist. Here, therefore, the narrative will be taken down to the days of James I, if only to show how

X

PREFACE

fittingly may be applied to another branch of the monastic body the words that have for long, and never more aptly than in recent years, been used as a device by the patriarchal abbey of Monte Cassino: succisa virescit. In the account of monastic life before the final storm several additions have been made to the conventional picture. As in the two previous centuries, the breadth of the field and the dearth of contemporary biographies and chronicles have made it difficult to strike a mean between a summary account and a series of chapters on particular groups and topics, and it has seemed best to allow some characteristic figures of the time space in which to reveal themselves. The reader who wishes to know what manner of men the religious were immediately before their disappearance may see them here in light and shadow: he can travel up and down the country among the white canons with Bishop Redman; he can visit the moated manor houses of the Severn valley with Prior More, or listen to Robert Joseph with his humanist's gossip of Oxford and Evesham; he can see Huby at work at Fountains, Kidderminster at Winchcombe, and Islip at Westminster; he can note the gatherings in the White Horse tavern at Cambridge or watch the splendours of the liturgy at Durham; he must not omit from the reckoning the enlightened piety of Syon and the austere and silent adoration of the Charterhouse. In more than one of these chapters sources of information have been used that hitherto have been neglected or unknown. Redman's Premonstratensian visitations and Prior More's Journal were printed for learned societies fifty years ago, but the former has been used only for controversial purposes while the latter, for all its rich variety of interest, seems to have escaped the notice of all historians of the period. Other sources are entirely new. The correspondence between the English Cistercians and the central authority at Citeaux is still unprinted; it tells us much about the year-to-year administration of the order and reveals, in Marmaduke Huby of Fountains, a Tudor Cistercian of real distinction. The letters of the Evesham monk, Robert Joseph, are likewise unpublished; they lift for a moment the veil that covers the thoughts and interests of the 'university monk* in the age of Erasmian humanism. Both these collections of documents will shortly be published, the former by the Royal Historical Society, the latter by the Oxford Historical Society, and I owe a great debt of gratitude to the two scholars concerned, Dr C. H. Talbot and Dom Hugh Aveling, of Ampleforth Abbey, for the unselfish generosity with which they have allowed me to use their materials and to ply them with questions. In the narrative of the Dissolution the unprinted reports of the commissioners of 1536 have been used more fully than by previous writers; they throw much light upon the social and economic conditions of the lesser monasteries. Similar help has also been obtained from a group of dissertations, still in typescript, that treat of the process of suppression in widely separated regions of England. Finally, in the account of the

PREFACE

XI

Marian revival and the Westminster succession the reader will be introduced to a less familiar field, which has nevertheless been explored to some purpose by modern Benedictine scholars. Here again my debt is great to Dom Hugh Aveling, and to his older confrere Dom Justin (later Abbot) McCann. In addition to those already mentioned the following have given assistance in various ways: Mr Thurston Dart of Jesus College and those who were his research students, with information about Tudor music; Mr G. R. Elton, of Clare College, with much helpful criticism; Dom Andrew Gray, of St Hugh's Charterhouse, Parkminster, with facts and documents connected with the London Charterhouse; Professor H. Habakkuk, of All Souls College, Oxford, concerning the sale of monastic lands; Mr W. A. Pantin, of Oriel College, Oxford, who for more than twenty years has continued to give encouragement and help of every kind; Professor M. M. Postan, by reading and criticizing an economic chapter; Dr J. J. Scarisbrick, with transcripts of Sussex visitations; Dom Aelred Watkin, of Downside Abbey, with information and documents about Glastonbury; and others whose names appear in the foomotes. Particular acknowledgement is due to Mr G. J. Hodgett, of King's College, London, to Mr J. Kennedy, and to Dr G. W. O. Woodward, of Nottingham University, who have allowed me to use freely the information contained in their unpublished dissertations. I must also thank all at the Cambridge University Press and Bentley House who during twenty-two years have displayed in their various ways so much skill and courtesy and goodwill in my regard. This volume completes a task that was undertaken almost exactly thirty years ago. At a critical moment in the course of its accomplishment it owed much (even if they did not know this at the time) to the advocacy of four Cambridge friends: the late Zachary Brooke, Herbert Butterfield, Philip Grierson and Munia Postan. Hospes fui et collegistis me. CAMBRIDGE

DAVID KNOWLES

6 January 1959

A reprinting of this book has given me the opportunity to correct small errors and make use of criticisms and information kindly given by reviewers and readers. The principal revisions are on pp. 32, 166, 170, 175-6 and 345, for which I am indebted to Dr C. H. Talbot, Professor G. Rupp, Dr G. R. Elton and Mr C. J. Hughes. PETERHOUSE

17 January 1961

M.D.K.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Full details of all works referred to in this volume are to be found in the Bibliography AB AC AJ BRS CAP Canivei CHS CL CPR CQR CS CYS DAR DNB DR DTC DubR DV EcHR EES EETS EHR EM GASA HBS Henry VIII HMC JEH LP LRS MC Memorials MO Monasticon MS AC n.s. OED OHS

Analecta Bollandiana Chapters of the Augustinian Canons (Salter) Archaeological Journal Bristol Record Society Collectanea Anglo-Premonstratensia (Gasquet) Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterdensis (ed. Canivez) Church Historical Society Cistercian Letters (ed. Talbot) Calendar of Patent Rolls Church Quarterly Review Camden Series Canterbury & York Society Account Rolls of the Abbey of Durham (Fowler) Dictionary of National Biography Downside Review Dictionnaire de Thiologie catholique Dublin Review Visitations of the Diocese of Lincoln (A. H. Thompson) Economic History Review English Ecclesiastical Studies (Graham) Early English T*xt Society English Historical Review English Monks and the Suppression of the Monasteries (Baskerville) Gesta Abbatum Sancti Albani Henry Bradshaw Society Henry VIII and the English Monasteries (Gasquet) Historical Manuscripts Commission Journal of Ecclesiastical History Letters & Papers of the reign of Henry VIII Lincoln Record Society Chapters of the Black Monks (Pantin) Memorials of Father Baker (McCann) The Monastic Order in England (Knowles) Monasticon Anglicanum (Dugdale) Monasterii S. Albani Chronica (ed. Riley) new series Oxford English Dictionary (Murray) Oxford Historical Society

XIV

OL o.s. PBA PRO RO RP RS SC SL SP SPV SRH SRS SS TBGAS TRHS Valor or VE VCH WHS YAJ YARS

L I S T OF A B B R E V I A T I O N S Original Letters (Ellis) old series (EETS); original series (CS) Proceedings of the British Academy Public Record Office The Religious Orders in England (Knowles) Record Publication Rolls Series (Chronicles & Memorials) Suppression Certificates Letters relating to the suppression of the monasteries (Wright) Suppression Papers State Papers {Venetian) The Somerset Religious Houses (Archbold) Somerset Record Society Surtees Society Transactions oj tf*e Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Valor Ecclesiasticus Victoria County History Worcestershire Historical Society Yorkshire Archaeological Journal Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series

T H E TUDOR SCENE

KROItl

CHAPTER I

THE REIGN OF HENRY VII I. THE CHANGING SCENE

The advent of the first Tudor sovereign marked no epoch in the history of the religious orders in England. Neither the policy of the king nor the external events of his reign affected in any direct way the fortunes of the monasteries. Nevertheless, here, as in so many departments of the national life, the return of calm weather after a season of storms, and the steady hand of a single master at the ship's helm, allowed all the natural forces of the age full play, and tendencies hitherto latent or only seen by glimpses now became clear to every beholder. Henry VII, as has often been remarked, was conservative and observant in religious matters. In this respect, indeed, he was a representative, almost a survival, of the last generation of simple medieval orthodoxy. Nothing in his outlook or behaviour differed in any significant respect from the ways of thinking and acting of Henry IV or still earlier monarchs. Neither humanism, nor Neoplatonism, nor neo-paganism, nor even the unethical political realism of Italy, had any direct influence on his attitude in religious matters. He was not personally interested in religion in its theological or devotional aspects, still less in its spiritual depth, but neither was he a critic or a libertine. His actions and policies, as we see them, were earthbound, and he did not understand the meaning of honour or integrity in affairs of state, but he was in his thought and behaviour in daily life a traditional and conventional Catholic, and he gave to religion, in his position at the summit of the social scale, the kind of service and respect, adequate but in no sense fervent or emotional, that was given on lower levels by the respectable country gentleman or city magnate. The century between 1450 and 1550 was one of great and rapid change in England as in the whole of Europe. In the last twenty years of that period the changes in this country amounted to a revolution, and are familiar as such to every reader. It has not, however, been universally realized that the spectacular events of the reign of Henry VIII were rendered possible, though not inevitable, by the slow and almost imperceptible changes in outlook and opinion during the decades that preceded them. These changes may have been in some respects less arresting than contemporary developments in Italy, France and Germany, because the latter—the cultural and religious movements known as the Renaissance and early Reform—took place in the open and among the most influential and articulate classes of society, but they were none the less very important. If the movements on the Continent may be compared to a storm that agitates the waves, those in England were as the pull of the tide towards

4

THE TUDOR SCENE

the shore. They were perhaps most significant in the social sphere and their results most obvious in a change of mutual relationships as between the religious, the upper classes of society, and the growing multitude of the well-to-do. In the age of Chaucer and Langland the aristocracy and higher gentry, the upper ranks of the Church, the leading theologians of the universities, and the outstanding figures in the religious orders, were still the sections of the community from which the leaders and policies of every kind arose. Above them the king could impose his pattern upon events only to a limited extent and with great personal effort; below them there was little possibility of articulate opposition, save in the exceptional matter of Lollardy, and the ease and relative success with which even this was rendered innocuous may be taken as showing how strong and cohesive the ecclesiastical body still continued to be. During the century that followed there was a great change. Though the older view that the nobility disappeared on the battlefields and scaffolds of the Wars of the Roses was an exaggeration of the truth, it is nevertheless certain that the great houses were sensibly fewer in number and far less secure in mind under Henry VII than they had been under Henry IV, whereas at the same time the classes of lesser landowners and rich merchants had greatly increased, while the king, in the person of the first Tudor, had risen well above the level of even the greatest of the nobles. As the master of all administration and initiative, indeed, he stood alone, or rather he stood supported by a powerful and talented group of lieutenants and executives of his own choosing, who were without any private strength save what was derived from the royal countenance. The fact that many of these officials were bishops did not diminish the king's prestige nor render any conflict of views possible, for they were government officials before all else. During the same period of time, there had been a notable shift in the interests and occupations of the educated class. Until the reign of Henry V the schools of philosophy and theology at the universities were still filling something of the functions of intellectual leadership that they had taken from the monasteries some two centuries earlier. The majority of the professional minds of Europe had been trained first in the school of arts and then in the schools of divinity or canon law. At this very moment, however, the most brilliant men of Italy were being drawn away to humanism, to the classics, to philosophy, to mathematics, and to the beginnings of science. This movement had remarkably little echo in England until the middle years of the reign of Henry VII. Instead, while the universities gradually lost the initiative and the living power of the past, a steady and swelling tide was setting towards the Inns of Court. These young lawyers were not precisely of the same social class as had provided the poor clerks of Bradwardine's or Chaucer's day; they were the sons, often the younger sons, of the landowners, great and small, who

THE REIGN OF HENRY VII

5

were themselves a rapidly expanding class of men. But from the end of the Wars of the Roses till the end of the reign of Elizabeth, the Inns of Court harboured and trained the flower of the intelligence and energy and ambition of the country. O( the men who influenced policy and rose to high position and wealth by their wits and personality between 1490 and 1590 perhaps three out of every four were lawyers trained either in the civil or the common law, and of these two groups the common lawyers were by far the more numerous. The young Thomas More was brought back by his father from the useless humanism of Oxford to the study of law, and the foreigner Erasmus noted with surprise how young men of good family flocked to the Inns.1 Aske and Cromwell, Audley, Rich, Lay ton, Legh, Christopher St German and Sir Thomas Eliot were all skilled in the law. With the decline of philosophy and theology as formative intellectual disciplines, and with humanism still the pursuit of a very few, the level of culture of the civilized intelligent life fell to a uniform mediocrity. The reservoirs of the past, the monasteries and the universities, had lost their high quality, the aristocracy of the campaign and the council chamber had not only decreased in numbers but had lost the ideals of courtesy and chivalry, brittle and artificial as they had doubtless become. The poets and the patrons of Lydgate's day had alike disappeared. Between the age of Chaucer's Knight and that of Sir Philip Sidney there was no class of society which could claim to be an aristocracy either of mind or of manners. The two expanding groups of prosperous landowners and men of commerce were not intellectually as refined and as carefully trained as were their counterparts in Italy. The term 'gentleman' was indeed currently used, but the educated gentleman, one of a class, did not exist.2 Almost all the energies and interests of Englishmen were directed towards purely material and personal ends: the acquisition of wealth and property, the founding of a family, the building of a house, the planning of a tomb and a chantry. Pecuniary values and economic gains were very nearly exclusive of all others. Perhaps in no other epoch of English history have purely material interests had such a monopoly in all the records of the age. Readers of the letter-books of the time—of the Pastons, the Plumptons, the Celys and the Stonors—are familiar with this: the cash value of a young man or a young woman is canvassed more eagerly than qualities of character or personal inclinations. Money and land are the only desirable 1 Erasmus, ed. P. S. Allen, ep. 999 (iv, 17): 'Quae professio [sc. Law] ut est a veris literis alienissima, ita apud Britannos cum primis habentur magni clarique qui in hoc genere sibi pararunt auctoritatem. Nee temere apud illos alia via ad rem et gloriam parandam magis idonea; siquidem pleramque nobilitatem illius insulae peperit hoc studiorum genus.' The letter is of 1519, but reflects the long experience of the writer. 2 The term 'gentleman' is notoriously slippery and impatient of definition save in its purely formal sense, but to how many of the leading men of the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII would we unhesitatingly attach it? To Reginald Pole, no doubt, and to Sir Thomas More, with a difference, but to whom else? To the fifteenth century the word had a strict connotation, e.g. to Godfrey Grene in 1464: 'There is a yong man, a mercer, in the Chepe . . .a Norfolk man and of birth no gent, as I understand' (The Plumpton Correspondence, 11).

6

THE TUDOR SCENE 1

things. For a brief space neither religious controversy, nor civil duties, nor the pursuit of adventure, nor the love of books or music, nor any theoretical or mental debate, had any appeal. The code of chivalry had gone; the code of loyalty and honour had yet to come. It is an earthy, selfish, grasping age. When the interest lies neither in theology nor letters the only measure is the law, and there has never been an age in England when the letter of the law, as contrasted with the spirit of equity and justice, so dominated men's minds. If the letter of the law can be satisfied, justice counts for nothing; on the other hand, purely material rights must be safeguarded when on a higher reckoning a robbery or an injustice is carried through without scruple. Our own age, so susceptible to the claims of social justice and so abhorrent of personal suffering, has lost much of the sense of prescriptive and legal rights to property and privilege, but the early Tudor age can only be understood if these latter are reckoned with. Deprived by Nominalism and theological formalism of the mental support of a reasoned philosophy and theology, and distrusting speculation of all kinds, the minds of the early Tudor age found security in two pillars of strength. The one was the common law of the land, tangible, acknowledged by all, and applied by experts taken from their midst. The other was the command of the sovereign, drawing its strength from his claim of obedience in conscience. In earlier times the royal authority, however violently or unreasonably it had on occasion been asserted, had in principle and often in fact been held in check by various limiting ideas at different times: by the counter-claims of the Church and canon law, upheld by popes and bishops; by the teaching of theologians and publicists on natural and divine law; by the integration of all law as a rational, ascertainable framework of the world and as a reflection of the divine order of the universe; and, finally, by the lack in the past of an organized, centralized machinery of government with adequate powers of execution and sanction, able to enforce the royal will and responsible to the king alone. At the end of the fifteenth century all these limiting factors had vanished or diminished; all that was now wanting was a king with sufficient intelligence, tact, and self-assurance to supply his subjects with the governance they desired and with the sense of security they needed. A firm government that did not outrage too violently the proprieties of common law and the material interests of the propertied classes could draw on a limitless fund of loyalty and submission. i Cf. the letter of the lovelorn Edward Plumpton from FurnivaH's Inn in 1497. He has been brought' into the sight of a gentlewoman, a wedow of the age of xl yeres and more... goodly and beautiful, womanly and wyse... she hath xx marc of good land within iij mile of London... she hath in coyne in old nobles c 1 1 ... she is called worth m11 beside hir land . . .she and I are agreed in our mynd and all one*. Cf. also a letter of 1472: *my Cosen Willyam hath ben with a full goodly Gentilwoman, and comynde with her after love's lore.. .suer yt is that of her ffader's enheritance she hath in possession C. markes of lande* (The Stonor Letters and Papers, 1, 123—4).

THE REIGN OF HENRY VII

7

These observations, like all such abstract generalizations about an age or a society, are no more than loose descriptions of the appearance of things. Instances, and important ones, of other and contradictory tendencies can readily be brought forward. Moreover, these sentiments and motives are at most only currents and ripples on the stream of human behaviour which in its essentials remains the same from age to age or, at most, only changes very gradually under the impact of some new external force. Beneath all the selfishness and materialism of the age, in which few historians have been able to find any admirable ethical characteristics, there can often be discovered the fairness, the kindliness and the love worthiness of undistinguished men and women. Nevertheless, if we wish to understand, or at least to be aware of, the problems of Tudor history, we must be at pains to approach them with minds quick to perceive the movement of feeling. The age was, like our own, one of swift change in which the landmarks, social, intellectual and economic, which had been familiar for centuries, suddenly shifted or vanished. There is an analogy, even if only a partial and distant one, between the fortunes of the monks between 1450 and 1535 and the fortunes of the English landed aristocracy between 1900 and to-day. In both cases a class of great wealth and social influence lost much of its power and prestige not precisely through any degeneration on its own part, but by reason of revolutionary social and economic changes in the world around it, and through the consequent changes of sentiment in its regard. There are many still alive to-day who can well remember a time when the whole rhythm of society seemed to depend upon the movements and pursuits of a relatively small * upper class', and when this or that great house dominated the life of half a county. Something of the same change took place with the religious orders in the sixty years with which we are now to be concerned. In the past historians have often assumed that while all else remained steady the monks fell rapidly into moral and pecuniary bankruptcy. It would be a truer view to see the world changing around them while they, for their part, were unable either to accompany that change or to adapt themselves to the demands and necessities of a different world. In that world both they and their neighbours round them were without any anchor save their ancestral and often now vestigial sense of spiritual realities, and a new sentiment of loyalty and obedience to the sovereign. They were to find every new influence a hostile one, in a grasping and acquisitive society which had as its characteristic quality a keen appreciation of the main chance. II. THE BLACK MONKS

The abbey of St Albans, which almost alone of the greater abbeys provides for the historian an unbroken series of chronicles or records from the Conquest to the reign of Henry VII, bids fair, by the distinction of its

8

THE TUDOR SCENE

sons, by its enduring love of letters, and by the indefinable quality which in an individual we call * personality' or even * greatness', to deserve the attention which it has always received. If, therefore, we begin our review of the last phase of English monastic life with a few pages on St Albans, it is partly because the records are still to hand, though progressively deteriorating as literary productions, and partly because the contrast between the abbey of William Wallingford and that of abbot Paul or Matthew Paris is itself a lesson in history.1 At St Albans, and there alone, we can follow the story of a monk who was in office before the Wars of the Roses began, and who lived to be abbot in the early years of Henry VII. This was William Wallingford, an enigmatic personage whose merits and demerits were canvassed in his lifetime in his own abbey, and have in recent years been debated, not without heat.2 He and his brother Thomas come first into prominence during the abbacy of John Stoke, who was elected on Whethamstede's resignation. Stoke had been prior of the dependent house of Wallingford, and it is natural to suppose that the two brothers had been in some way his * discovery* or his proteges. Certainly in his last years Thomas was sub-almoner and abbot's chaplain, while William, besides functioning as archdeacon, had also collected the offices of cellarer, bursar, forester and sub-cellarer; he was indeed known as the 'general official'. When Abbot Stoke died the community was divided in opinion. One party favoured the omnicompetent Wallingford, another the prior, William Albone, and for perhaps the last time the monks of St Albans enjoyed an electoral dialectic which was chronicled in language distantly recalling the golden age of Walsingham or Paris.3 As the two rivals were well matched a compromise was effected by recalling the elderly Whethamstede from his retirement at his native manor. This course, hard to parallel in all the centuries of English monastic history, was surprisingly successful. Whethamstede, though no longer showing the elasticity or enterprise of his early days, was still a good diplomat and served the abbey well in the trying decade which witnessed the two battles of St Albans (22 May 1455 and 17 February 1461), in the second of which town and monastery were sacked and the abbot and community forced to scatter. Despite this misfortune and the uncertainties of the times, the abbot was able to continue his building and decoration. The records, indeed, give the impression that the economic position of the abbey was so strong that tolerably good management could always ensure a comfortable surplus, but the disaster of 1461 has been taken to mark the end of a chapter in the history of the house; after it we hear little of the visits of royalty, of great nobles and of 1 The best account of St Albans in the last century of its existence is still that of Miss M. Reddan in VCH, Herts, iv (1914), 403—8, together with the same writer's articles on Sop well and Pre {ibid. 424-5, 431). Miss Reddan takes full account of the record and legal sources. 2 The contemporary accounts and criticisms of Wallingford are in MSAC, vi (i) (Registrum Johannis IVhethamstede, i). 3 Reg. J. Whethamstede, I, 6-9.

THE REIGN OF HENRY VII

9

embassies that for centuries had kept St Albans in the stream of the nation's life. Whethamstede's first year in his second term of office had been marked by a domestic scandal of which the true story is probably lost beyond recovery. Two versions exist, and both are clearly biased, but in each the brothers Wallingford, and especially William, are accused of embezzlement and the misuse of funds on a large scale.1 Whatever the exact truth, it seems impossible to acquit the general official of all fault. The elderly Whethamstede did not press the charges home, and William Wallingford, though deprived of most of his offices, retained the influential post of archdeacon. When Whethamstede died in 1465 the ancients of the house must have exchanged memories of the world they had known more than forty years before, when the young abbot had stood for old customs against Henry V; they may also have exchanged more recent memories before electing William Albone, the prior, and his election seems to show that Wallingford had not yet fully recovered the confidence of his brethren. He was clearly indispensable, however, and held under Albone the offices of archdeacon and kitchener as well as that of prior, which at St Albans had so often been a step to the summit. When Albone died in 1476 Wallingford at last reached the top; he was the last abbot to take a notable place in the long list of those who for more than four centuries had rendered the abbey ever more magnificent and more beautiful. The chronicler gives a long catalogue of his works, which included the reredos, still to be seen, in the presbytery, and his own chantry and tomb. At the same time the decline in the prestige of the house and the growing power of smaller people are shown by the proceedings taken in chancery against him, and his difficulties with nunneries under his jurisdiction. All these and other troubles came to a head in 1490 in the affair with Archbishop Morton, and in the very serious charges made against the abbey at that time. This affair of St Albans has been debated at great length by historians ever since Froude gave to it a controversial notoriety.2 It must not be allowed to bulk too large in a general view of monastic life in the reign of Henry VII. Nevertheless, the last years of Wallingford's reign saw a decline setting in at St Albans from which the abbey never recovered, and the forty years that remained added nothing of note to the story of the house. Wallingford died in office in 1492 and was succeeded by his prior, Ramryge, who like his predecessor left a chantry in his church, but otherwise little of note either for good or for evil. On his death in 1521 Wolsey secured for himself the abbey in commendam and held it till his fall eight years later, leaving it impoverished, and the last years of St Albans were embittered by intrigues and rumours of the approaching end. Yet the age was not the age of Wallingford alone. It was the age also 1 Ibid, n o seqq., I l 6 seqq. 2 For a short account of the episode, v. infra, pp. 78-9.

IO

THE TUDOR SCENE

of Richard Bere of Glastonbury, of Richard Kidderminster at Winchcombe, of John Islip at Westminster, and of Marmaduke Huby at Fountains. In the pages that follow we shall see something of these men and their world. The machinery of government of the black monks continued in function1 to the Dissolution. While there is no evidence to suggest that after the elaborate re-edition of the statutes at the chapter of 1444 any further legislation of similar importance appeared, small additions and re-affirmations continued to be made, the latest dating from 1516,2 and in theory and on paper at least, the discipline and observance suffered no great change between the days of Thomas de la Mare and those of John Islip. Chapters continued to meet regularly and to appoint visitors, who duly went their rounds. From 1336, without a single exception, Northampton was the venue of the triennial chapter till 1495; then, for no clear reason, the point of assembly was shifted to Coventry, which had long been among the four or five most populous towns of provincial England, and which had held its prosperity during the fifteenth century. Coventry appreciated the compliment, and was at pains to recognize the occasion with a civic welcome, which took place on Wednesday, 4 July, when the fathers had done their business at the cathedral priory. The reception is vividly described in the Leet Book.3 After the final formalities the chaptermen came forth at the south durre in the Mynstere & toke their wey thurgh the newe bildyng downe the Bailly-lane. And the Maire & his Brethren in their scarlet Clokes with all the Craftes in theire best araye stode under the Elme in Seynt Mighelles Chirchyard. And all the pensels [pennons] of the Cite before them: which pensels there went before the Crosse, & the Maire with his Brethren & the Craftes stode styll till the presidentes cam whom the Maire toke be the handes & welcomed them to town, & so folowed the procession.. .into the Priory; & there was a solempne sermon seyde, where the Maire there satte betwixt both presidentes, & after sermon doon they departed every man to his loggyng & som with the Maire to dyner, as dyuers of them did before. At Coventry the chapter stayed till 1519. In that year, possibly through the influence of John Islip, then and thenceforth one of the presidents, a move was made to Westminster, and there the meetings took place till 1532, when the last recorded chapter was held on 16 January. III. THE FRANCISCAN OBSERVANTS

The Observant Friars were the only representatives in England of the reform movements of the later Middle Ages which gave birth to a number of new and zealous organizations among the monks and friars. Unlike most of these, the Observants did not originate at a fixed moment as a 1 Cf. lists of chapters and references to Northampton (index, s.v.) in Pantin, MCpassim, vols. 11, in. 2 MC, 11, 224—6. 3 EETS, o.s., 138, p. 588, reprinted MC, in, 116—17.

THE REIGN OF HENRY VII

11

branch of the Friars Minor. Rather, they counted among their spiritual ancestry all those, such as the ^elanti and the Spirituals, who had in one way or another opposed the successive mitigations of the Rule of St Francis, especially on the point of the corporate ownership of property. The Observants, however, were not direct descendants of the Spirituals; they were the outcome of a swelling wave of fervour in the second half of the fourteenth century.1 As has been noted in passing in an earlier volume,2 the bitter struggle between the Spirituals and the friars of the broader way had to outward appearance ended in a coalition, based on the victory of the Conventuals or followers of the mitigated Rule. The decisions of John XXII in his bulls Ad conditorem canonum (8 December 1322) and Quorundam exigit (7 October 1323) had seemed to put an end to idealism on both the practical and theoretical levels, by restoring to the Minors the ownership of property hitherto vested in the Holy See, and by denying that Christ and His Apostles had practised absolute material poverty. Nevertheless, a desire for the literal observance of the Rule had never become wholly extinct, and throughout the fourteenth century there were attempts by individuals or groups to return to the primitive observance, either while remaining within the order or by obtaining a papal privilege to withdraw from it. The numbers of friars acting in this way gradually multiplied, and the expedient was adopted of allowing certain houses to follow the stricter life, and in the latter half of the fourteenth century the number of such convents increased. Most of these remained within the order, but a few groups and individuals obtained papal privileges, enabling them to withdraw from it. As the movement spread in the early fifteenth century groups of houses in certain provinces were given papal permission to have provincial vicars and even (in 1414) a vicar-general of their own. It was in this epoch that the Observance gained lustre from three of its members who became luminaries of the order in the first half of the century, St Bernardine of Siena, St James della Marchia, and St John Capistran. The two first of these deprecated any cleavage among the Minors, and in 1430 Martin V endeavoured to restore unity by means of a general reform. The attempt issued only in a papal acknowledgement of the essential demands of the Conventuals, and there followed a strong movement towards secession on the part of the Observant Friars, led by John Capistran. This was only partially successful, and the Observants remained under the jurisdiction of the minister general of all the Minors, though with provincial ministers of their own; in addition, it was forbidden to monarchs or others to make any attempt to substitute Observants for Conventuals in existing houses. 1 There is no good account in English of the origins of the Observants. For what may be called their pre-history, v. D. L. Douie, The Nature and Effects of the heresy of the Fraticelli.

2 RO, 1, 245-7.

12

THE TUDOR SCENE

So matters stood when the first move was made to introduce the Observants into England.1 The first request was made to no less a person than St John Capistran himself by Charles I, Margrave of Baden, acting for Henry VI. John replied (24 October 1454) that he could not come to England as he was about to go to Hungary, and the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses in the next year, followed shortly by the death of the saint, postponed the project indefinitely. The next impulse would seem to have been due to the sister of Edward IV, Margaret of Burgundy, who was on a visit to England in the summer of 1480. Both her father-in-law, Philip, and she herself are known to have been both clients and patrons of the Observants, and in September 1481, acting with some English nobles, she obtained a bull from Sixtus IV authorizing the foundation of three Observant houses in this country. Nothing came of this immediately, but it is natural to see some connection between Margaret's action and the invitation issued by the king, probably in the autumn of 1480, to the vicar-general of the Ultramontane family of the Observants to make a foundation at Greenwich. He refused to act without papal licence, whereupon the king obtained a bull of 4 January 1481, licensing a foundation at Greenwich or anywhere else, and the house duly came into being on 2 July 1482. It was to be subject to a commissary of the vicar-general until the number of English convents should have grown. The first commissaries were foreigners and for some years, at least, a majority of the friars would seem to have been of foreign birth. The new plantation did not increase rapidly. It had, however, the warm patronage of the new king, Henry VII, who on 11 December of the year of Bosworth gave his approval to what had been accomplished at Greenwich. Some thirteen years later an advance was made, but this took the form, not of a new venture, but of an endeavour to replace the Conventuals with Observants infiveconvents.2 Such a measure, against which the Conventuals had of old endeavoured to protect themselves by a series of prohibitory bulls, was only rendered possible by a non obstantibus clause in the bull of 14 April 1498, issued by Alexander VI. This was given in response to a request from the king, who had stated that of the fiftyseven houses of Minors in England that of Greenwich was the only one where any observance worth the name remained, and that the total population of these fifty-seven houses did not surpass that of twenty-five in the past.3 As the latter of these two sweeping statements is inaccurate, for the total number of Franciscans in 1490 was about two-thirds of the total of 1348, and had in fact risen slowly but steadily for many decades, so it is probable that the state of observance was considerably better than the petition to the pope had suggested. Indeed, the petition was itself incon1 For this, v. A. G. Little, 'The Introduction of the Observant Friars into England', in PBA, x. 2 This move is recounted in a second article by A. G. Little, 'The Introduction of the Observant Friars into England', in PBAy xxvu. 3 Little, PBAy xxvu, 157.

THE REIGN OF HENRY VII

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sistent, for it had gone on to say that the convent of Greenwich was full to overflowing, and the king was consequently given permission to transfer the Conventuals from any particularly irregular houses to houses of better observance, and to fill the vacancies with Observants, unless indeed the original inhabitants were willing to adopt the observance of the newcomers. Acting upon this bull, Henry effected the transference to the Observants of the friaries at Canterbury and Newcastle-on-Tyne, and on 19 May 1499 an English province was constituted independent of the Conventuals.1 In the following year new foundations were made at Richmond (Surrey) and, some seven years later, at Newark. There the increase stopped, and for the remaining three decades of conventual life the Observants held these five houses, as against the fifty-five still occupied by the Conventuals. Introduced by the king into England, and settled as what in an earlier age would have been called a * royal chapel' adjacent to the palaces of Greenwich and Sheen, the friars served as confessors, counsellors and preachers to the royal family, and as such were to bear the brunt of the royal displeasure when the private affairs of the king suddenly became part of a political and religious revolution. IV. FIFTEENTH-CENTURY

SUPPRESSIONS

If, as has been noted elsewhere, the numbers of the religious in England fluctuated considerably between 1300 and 1500, and showed a notable overall reduction between these two limiting dates, the numbers of religious houses remained remarkably stable. In a final analysis, this stability is eloquent witness to the even flow of English life between those dates, without revolution and without destructive warfare. There was, of course, the loss of the majority of the lesser alien priories in the decades immediately before and after 1400; in consequence, almost one hundred names disappeared from the monastic map. But these, with scarcely an exception, were small, dependent houses. Among the autonomous houses of all orders, and among the friaries, there were, with one partial reservation, practically no casualties at all between 1300 and 1500, despite the devastation of the pestilences. The rare exceptions to this statement (leaving aside for the moment the Austin canons) can be counted almost on the fingers of one hand, though the total number of houses was well over four hundred on any reckoning. The small priory of Luffield (Northants), never really well off, was left desolate by the Black Death and never recovered. It was finally snuffed out in 1494. The abbey of Alcester, another cradle-sick child, was petering out in 1465, when it was annexed to Evesham and continued a tenuous existence till the end. The remaining casualties were either small dependencies such as Beaulieu (Bedfordshire), or victims of border warfare such as Cardiff. Even among the nunneries only two disappeared— 1 Little, PBA, x, 465.

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THE TUDOR SCENE

Rowney (Herts) in 1457, and St Radegund's at Cambridge, the earliest (1496) of the group of small houses of various kinds suppressed by Tudor prelates in the interests of new educational establishments.1 The partial reservation made above concerns the Austin canons. Here, within the century 1410-1510, some sixteen houses lost their autonomy, and of these nine ceased to exist as religious houses.2 In almost every case the establishment was a small one, and since it was usual among the Austin canons for the size of the original community to bear a direct ratio to the income, a small decrease either of income or personnel could make regular life impossible. Most of the casualties under review were caused either by the family of three or four becoming extinct, or by a serious decrease of the tenuous revenues, or by a combination of these two circumstances. The Austin canons, alone of the religious orders, had autonomous houses minute both in numbers and funds, and it was undoubtedly this that led to a fair number of failures in the fifteenth century. At all periods the life of the black canons had been the least austere and the least strictly organized of any of the religious bodies, and in the fifteenth century their way of life had to meet the competition of the numerous new collegiate foundations, which suited the taste of the age better. The sinking of these houses, therefore, should not be set in a dramatic light. They had never been very significant, and their disappearance was neither a catastrophe nor a portent. Where practicable, these moribund priories were annexed to neighbouring houses; in a few cases they were bestowed by king or patron on some favourite educational establishment. The reasons given for the disappearance of these houses may serve also to explain the continued existence of many of their fellows. In a country which for some four hundred years had not suffered a social or economic revolution, a landed estate of moderate size, held by an undying community, had every chance of survival, and even of appreciation, and every indication goes to show that until the very eve of the Dissolution the prospect of a guaranteed livelihood, in combination with such attractions as the religious life in itself might have, was enough to ensure a regular, if modest, flow of recruits. 1 For these houses, v. D. Knowles and R. N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses. 2 For these, v. J. C. Dickinson, * Early Suppressions of English Houses of Austin Canons*. The title and occasional expressions in Mr Dickinson's essay might give the careless reader the impression that the number of suppressions (as opposed to amalgamations) was greater than was in fact the case.

CHAPTER II

SOME MONASTIC ACTIVITIES I. MUSIC AND THE CHANT

In an earlier volume some account was given of the development of Gregorian chant and other music in the monasteries of England down to the beginning of the thirteenth century,1 and the story was continued later with a few notes upon the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.2 Until very recently little was known of English music between 1350 and 1500, when the series of great composers began, whose Masses and motets opened what now for sixty years has been recognized as the golden age of English music. Within the last thirty years or so, however, musicologists in Europe and America have revealed with increasing clarity the eminence of the Englishman John Dunstable (d. 1453), and his importance in the history of continental as well as of English music. Between Dunstable and the sixteenth century something of a void seemed to exist, and it had been suggested that, as with poetry and literary prose an interlunary period had succeeded the age of Rolle, Hilton, Langland and Chaucer, so in music no master had immediately followed Dunstable. Now, however, a group of scholars can show this supposition to be false; throughout the fifteenth century music of a very high order of excellence was being produced, which set England in the van of a great movement and led without a break from Dunstable to the masterpieces of Taverner and Byrd, and through the age of the madrigalists to that of Henry Purcell.3 With this outpouring of musical genius we are not directly concerned, for it took place almost entirely outside the monasteries, and in the few cases where a monastery enters the story it is generally as the patron or employer of a composer who was not himself a monk. In the realm of music, as in that of literary and theological work, the monasteries had ceased during the thirteenth century to be the leaders of their world. The age of plainsong came gradually to an end, and the new forms of choral music, which had originated in the monasteries and had been developed by them, passed into the hands of musicians who were not monks and often not even clerics, whose works were performed by professional singers, the 'singing men' of cathedrals and colleges, and the children of song schools attached to great churches or forming part of a collegiate foundation. It was the age of chantries and colleges and, just as the stream of benefactions had been diverted from the religious houses to the college 1 MO, 545-<»o* RO, 1, 305-7; 11, 296. 3 For what immediately follows, I must acknowledge the help given by Mr Thurston Dart, of Jesus College, Mr B. L. Trowell, of Gonville and Caius College, and Mr H. Baillie, of Corpus Christi College, who have been making pioneer study of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century music.

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THE TUDOR SCENE

and the memorial chantry, so the initiative in music passed from the monks to the master of the choristers in the great colleges and LadyChapels up and down the land, and especially to the masters in such royal or splendid foundations as Eton, Windsor, the Chapel Royal, King's College, Cambridge, St Stephen's, Westminster, and Winchester College.1 While this change was taking place, the monasteries remained, as they had remained in other fields, strongly conservative. The Gregorian chant had always throughout Europe been the consecrated chant of the Gradual and Antiphonary, and it remained so to the end. How far it was blunted and degraded in England in the later middle ages has still to be discovered, but it is certain that the great mass of service books collected in the monasteries and largely destroyed at the Reformation contained Gregorian chant alone, and to the very end visitors recalled the religious on occasion to its execution.2 The Gregorian chant, however, had never been exclusive. In the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman monasteries the presence of the children of the cloister had helped to encourage the early development of harmony and primitive counterpoint. When the children gradually disappeared with the cessation of infant oblation, it became customary at many houses to employ a few singing men to assist the monks with harmonized chant at Mass or Vespers, and while visitors continued to deplore artificial or falsetto singing on the part of the religious, they were ready to allow use to be made of lay singers to ease the task of the monks.3 Nevertheless, the monks and canons seem rarely if ever to have given a home in their choirs to the very latest developments of counterpoint in the fifteenth century. These were the province, as has been said, of the choirmasters of colleges, and seem not to have been connected with the liturgy but with the favourite extra-liturgical services of the age, the Lady Mass and the anthem of the Blessed Virgin sung before or after the evening Salve Regina. Here, however, there was a link between monastic and collegiate musical practice. The sung Lady Mass, first introduced at the great abbeys in the thirteenth century, gradually became universal. The performance of the chant for two Masses daily, in addition to the other offices, would have been an almost unbearable physical burden, and it was probably the need of assistance and the desire for elaboration in execution that gave birth to the monastic song-school, either as a separate establishment or as a part of the almonry school. By the end of the fourteenth century many of the largest abbeys had schools of this kind. The master, a layman, was engaged to teach the boys all forms of choral singing and to compose Masses and notes for them.4 1 For an interim report on this, v. Musica Britannica, x, 'The Eton Choirbook': I, ed. F. LI. Harrison, introduction, and the same author's article, 'The Eton Choirbook', in Annales Afusicologiques, I. 2 E.g. at Wenlock, injunction 25 in R. Graham, ' Roland Gosenell, Prior of Wenlock, 1521-6', in E.E.S. 142: 'gregoriana nota utatur'. 3 E.g. at St Mary's, York, visitation of c. 1393-4 {MC, m, 84). 4 i?O, 11, 296.

SOME MONASTIC ACTIVITIES

17

With the end of the fifteenth century another great change began. Elaborate choral compositions, hitherto generally restricted to the Lady Mass and motets or anthems, began to come in, not only for Masses of all kinds, but also for all the liturgical texts such as antiphons, responds and the various occasions of the liturgical year. By the early decades of the sixteenth century the offices at a great feast and for the Triduum of Holy Week had come to have a musical setting of great elaboration: indeed, it seems clear that a fair-sized collegiate or parish choir may well have performed a musical programme comparable to that of the very largest cathedral churches of modern times. It is strange that at the very moment when the liturgical traditions and monuments of the past were being swept remorselessly away, the musical setting of the liturgy in elaborate counterpoint was on the point of being brought to perfection by English masters in compositions that have never been surpassed. As the variety and breadth of musical techniques developed, the choirmaster at an abbey may well have introduced to the monastic choir some of the new forms of music that his colleagues were perfecting in colleges and royal chapels. Some idea of the musical repertory of a large monastic church may be gathered from the indentures made between the prior and convent of Durham and a succession of choirmasters. There are three such documents from the Tudor period alone, all couched in exactly the same terms. The last, dated 4 December 1513, sets out the duties of the post as follows r1 The said Thomas Haskewell [ =Ashwell] shall give instruction, with assiduous care and as he best knows how, to such monks of the house as may be chosen, together with eight lay boys. He shall freely and to the best of his ability take pains to teach them both to play the organ and to acquire a knowledge of plain chant and harmonized chant by practising plain-song, prick-note, faburden, descant, swarenote and counterpoint.2 He shall give them lessons carefully and 1 Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae Scriptores Tres, ed. J. Raine, no. cccxxiii, p. ccccxiii. 2 The text has: 'planesong, priknott, faburdon, dischant, swarenote et countre'. With the exception of plainsong, these terms are still of uncertain significance, owing partly to their various meanings in different times and places. Three categories of music seem to be included: plainsong, written polyphony and various kinds of improvised harmonization. Pricknote seems to have been written or 'pricked' polyphony, the notation being written in small dots or points. Faburdon, descant and counter are best taken as different forms of improvised polyphony. Faburden has many meanings and eludes definition, v. Scholes, Oxford Companion to Music, s.v. The OED, citing Stainer and Barrett, has' a sort of harmony consisting of thirds and sixths added to a canto fermo', but perhaps Grove's definition is more in place:' a type of descant [peculiarly English] in which the chief melody is transferred from the tenor [ = our bass] to the highest voice [soprano]'. Descant is defined by Grove as: 'any polyphonic composition mensurable in every part, as distinct from the organum purum where the plainsong tenor is not measured'; but in common usage it is a form of extempore part-singing upon a plainsong melody. Counterpoint as an art-form has been defined as: ' the combination of simultaneous voice-parts, each independent but all conducing to a result of uniform coherent texture' (Scholes, Oxford Companion to Music, citing W. H. Hadow), but in the Durham indentures and elsewhere is probably merely another form of improvisation. Swarenote is the most difficult of all to define, since there is division of opinion as to whether it denotes a developed form of notation—the ars nova, the measured music of the fourteenth and later centuries, with 'squares' replacing 'points',—or whether it is merely KROIII

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THE TUDOR SCENE

adequately four times a day on all ferial days, that is, twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, and shall hear their renderings, keeping from them nothing of his knowledge in these matters. The said Thomas Haskewell shall also be bound to attend in person in the choir of the cathedral at all Masses, vespers and anthems of Our Lady at which prick-note, descant, faburden and harmonized music are performed, and he shall be present from start to finish of this chant. If needed, he shall play the organ in the choir, and sing the tenor part or any other part that suits his voice or mat is appointed him by the precentor. Also he shall be present in person each day at the sung Mass of Our Lady in the Galilee and shall sing there either plainsong or polyphony.1 He shall also be responsible at the precentor's request for providing the chant, and every year he shall compose a new Mass of four or five parts, or some equivalent piece. For all this he is to receive a salary of £10 a year and a livery, with a modest pension in old age, or if he is overtaken by infirmity. From these indentures it is clear that polyphony and counterpoint, as well as other forms of harmonized chant, formed a normal augmentation of plain chant in the monastic choir, and that the young monks were instructed by a professional in all these forms of music. The chant was also accompanied with organ-music, and in this, too, the monks were taught to take part. As for the boys of the song-school, they certainly sang at the Lady Mass and evening Salve, and probably also on other festal occasions. At a large church, and with the kind of choirmaster Durham would attract, the repertory of music and the daily ration provided in choir may well have been generous and rich in quality. It is worth noting, however, that the formulae of the indentures were almost identical from 1440 to 1515,2 whereas the developments in music during that time were very great. It would therefore be rash to suppose that the character and quantity of the music remained the same, while it would be equally rash to understand every term in the indenture with all its contemporary fullness; we cannot say, for example, on the strength of the indentures alone, that at Durham there were performed in the monastic choir Masses of the complexity and magnificence of Taverner's compositions. On the other hand, some of the very greatest names of the Tudor age occur as monastic choirmasters. Thus Robert Fayrfax was organist and director of music at St Albans from 1498 or 1502 for some twenty years, though he retained his connection with the chapel royal, and Thomas Tallis was organist and master of the choristers at Waltham for some years before the surrender of the house.3 With such masters, and with a copious supply of good voices, some of the monastic churches must another form of improvised singing in harmony. It may be added that the testimonial given in 1489 to a monk of Westminster about to migrate to Wenlock, that he could c syng both playn song and prikked song', suggests that such an accomplishment was normal. Cf. E. H. Pearce, The Monks of Westminster, 16$. 1 Cf. the account of this in Rites of Durham, infra, p. 136. 2 The earliest indenture of 1447 (Scriptores Tres, appendix cccxv) has all the above terms save' swarenote', which appears first in the indentures of 1496 (no. ccc) and 1502 (no. cccx). 3 V, article in Grove's Dictionary, supplementing DNB.

SOME MONASTIC ACTIVITIES

19

in the early years of Henry VIII have enjoyed an abundance of splendid music in no way inferior to that of the great secular churches and chapels. The fifteenth century saw a swift and remarkable advance in the design and construction of the organ, which grew in a century and a half from the primitive instrument of the early Middle Ages into what is a recognizable forebear of the modern organ.1 In its broadest lines the change was from an organ with a small and mainly diatonic range of notes, each controlling a large number of pipes and manipulated (if that is the word) by a blow of the fist, from which the only effect attainable was that of the 'full organ',2 to a much more varied instrument controlled from a chromatic keyboard actuated by a touch of the finger and having stops to shut off individual ranks of pipes. This development, like the contemporary development of printing, was principally the work of German or Flemish mechanics, and the innovations reached England slowly; in many churches the primitive organ probably had a long survival. The 'great* organs in particular probably remained unchanged, and the improvements appeared only in small instruments. Generally speaking, by the last decades of the fifteenth century there were two kinds of organ in every large church: the 'great' organ, a melody instrument having as many as forty pipes to a note, and the 'little' organ, a harmony instrument with greater range and flexibility, varying in size according to its pitch. The former was used either for moments and occasions of emotion, when a loud or joyful noise was appropriate, or to support strong choral singing; the latter, the small organ, was used for the more delicate accompaniment of chant and polyphony, or for playing alternate verses of hymns, Magnificats and Masses, and for the first beginnings of instrumental music and improvisation. Most monastic churches would have had three organs: the great organ in the nave, transept or choir aisle; a small organ within the choir itself or on the choir screen; and another small organ in the Lady Chapel to accompany the choristers.3 Thus at Waltham in Tallis's time there were a 'great larg payre' and 'a lesser payr' of organs in the choir, and *a lytell payre of organes' in the Lady Chapel. The two small organs were probably of the kind that could on occasion be carried about the church; instruments of this kind were small enough to fit into a tribune or a gallery. Whethamstede's expensive organ at St Albans, probably still functioning in Tallis's day, was presumably an up-to-date piece of work for the midfifteenth century ;* replacements were generally slow in coming. The great 1 V. article 'Organ* in Grove's Dictionary, and authorities there cited. 2 The Latin phrase *organa pulsare' is still used in Roman rubrical directions. One is inclined to render 'thump the organ', but the term pulsare has a respectable musical ancestry with more gentle associations; it is used, e.g., of playing on the lyre by Virgil, Aeneid,vi, 647. 3 So Grove, Dictionary, s.v. Tallis, citing a Waltham inventory of 1540 in PRO, Exch. K.R. Church goods, 11/24. A *pa*r of organs' simply='an organ'; cf. 'a pair of stairs' and Germ, 'ein Paar\ 4 Whethamstede's organ (Amundesham, Annales, I,198,259; RegistrumJ. Whethamstede, 1, 455) cost £17. 6s. %d. It was for the choir, and the additional expense of £43. 3$. 3*/. for the organ and gospel stand suggests that it stood on a screen or gallery.

2O

THE TUDOR SCENE

and small organs at Butley that were repaired in 1511 were old instruments, and the * pair of organs' with two stops given by Henry Barrett to the Lady Chapel in the same year was clearly small and simple, whereas the 'organ of excellent voice and tone with five stops', given by the prior in 1534 was probably a more modern product.1 Thus far only black monks and canons have been mentioned. Some of the other orders were stricter in their musical regulations. Thus organs and polyphony were forbidden to the Carthusians, and organs were officially forbidden at Syon, though the earliest surviving piece of English organ music appears to be associated with this house. The Cistercians for long did their best to prevent polyphony from coming in, but in the fifteenth century organs were normal. The Carmelites allowed faburden, but not motets.2 While none of the many great composers of the age is known to have been a religious, and Prior Dygon of St Augustine's 3 is almost the only monastic figure of any note, some of the greatest, as has been seen, were connected with religious houses. Fayrfax and Tallis were normal in their relationship, but John Taverner, in some ways the greatest of them all, though his life as an artist was short, has a less pleasant connection with the religious life. A Lincolnshire man, perhaps a native of Boston, he made his name at the neighbouring college of Tattershall, famed for its music, and was recommended to Wolsey by his diocesan, John Longland, when the cardinal needed a choirmaster for his Oxford college. There, in the choir that had been till recently that of the canons of St Frideswide's, his choristers gave expression to his rapid outpouring of majestic melody. His muse, however, failed to keep her hold on Taverner, and he began, like others at Cardinal College, to take up with the new learning. Wolsey tolerant as ever, and apparently appreciative of his genius, remarked to his accusers that he 'was but a musitian' and could do no harm.4 The cardinal misjudged his man. Taverner, with the virus in his system, abandoned his harmonies for militant Protestantism and became a zealous agent of Cromwell in the suppression of the monasteries and the destruction of superstition. He composed no more, and died within a few years, to be buried beneath the great tower of Boston church, the * beacon of the fens'. The dissolution of the monasteries, followed after a brief interval by that of the colleges, must have given to musical composers and executants a shock almost as great as that received by architects and masons. It was not only that they lost the theatre and tools of their profession; they lost 1 The Register or Chronicle of Butley Priory, Suffolk, 1510—35, ed. A. G. Dickens, 28: 'unum par Organorum.. .cum ii obstructionibus'; 66: 'unum par Organorum bene intonatum et sonoratum cum quinque obstruccionibus'. 2 For these, v. Archdale A. King, Liturgies of the Religious Orders, -$z£., 96 f., 287. 3 For Dygon, v. DNB and Grove's Dictionary; and for a glimpse of him as prior, v. infra, p. 95. 4 The phrase is reported by Foxe, Actes of the Martyrs (ed. 1576, p. 1004), who notes that Wolsey 'excused him for his musicke'.

SOME MONASTIC ACTIVITIES

21

also the very matter of their art, the Latin liturgy and its robe of plainsong. Nevertheless, in spite of a barren decade, music rode the storm more successfully than architecture.* Whereas Gothic designing came to a full stop, and reappeared only in the rarest examples, music, then in a new and virile phase of growth, unfolded its flowers as if there had been no storm, and even continued to use the old types and forms—the Mass, the Passion, the Motet—as the basis of its structure. What the Elizabethans made of some of the words to which Byrd set his music must remain something of a mystery. We wonder also whether the canons of Waltham, who heard the first performance of some of Tallis's Masses when their days in the cloister were already numbered, remained unmoved in Holy Week by his magnificent Lamentations and the call, nine times repeated, to Jerusalem to turn to her God, with its imploring address and the solemn cadences of the two bass voices. ii.

B U I L D I N G : THE LAST PHASE

Historians of the Tudor age have often declared that a period of activity in building, both ecclesiastical and domestic, opened with the return of peace in the reign of Henry VII. This statement, like so many others once made of the fifteenth century, has been challenged recently; Yve have been told that the Wars of the Roses were less catastrophic than earlier generations supposed, that many large areas were unaffected by them, and that English industry and commerce expanded steadily throughout the fifteenth century. There was, therefore, no a priori reason why building activity should slacken, and indeed careful examination of extant work has shown, and doubtless will hereafter show still more clearly, that parish churches all through the country were being rebuilt with larger naves or chancels, and with the towers and spires that are the glory of the regions that lie upon or near good freestone, such as Somerset, the Cotswolds and the upland country that runs north-east from Oxfordshire through Northamptonshire to Lincoln. It is easy, also, to cite some notable cases of large-scale building, such as that in the abbey church of Bury St Edmunds after the disastrous fire of 1465. Nevertheless, it is probably true that the half-century between 1440 and 1490 saw the inception of fewer large-scale undertakings than the periods immediately before and after, particularly at the highest architectural level, that of cathedrals, abbeys, and chapels royal. We remember the slow progress at Westminster at this time, and the virtual standstill at King's College Chapel, Cambridge. In contrast 1 The reader who has no music in his soul may care to have the sour comment of Erasmus (1516) on 1 Cor. xiv. 19: 'They have so much of it [sc. choral music] in England that the monks attend to nothing else. A set of creatures who ought to be lamenting their sins fancy they can please God by gurgling in their throats. Boys are kept in the English Benedictine monasteries solely and simply to sing hymns to the Virgin. If they want music, let them sing psalms like rational beings, and not too many of diem.'

22

THE TUDOR SCENE

to this it is certain that the religious houses of England, during the last half-century of their existence, showed an undiminished activity in adding to their churches, in embellishing them, and above all in using all the new techniques and materials and designs of domestic architecture to adapt their buildings to the demands and tastes of a new age. No attempt will here be made to compile a catalogue of these works, or to distinguish individual or regional styles, but a brief glance at some of the noteworthy buildings of the Tudor age will show that the religious continued, up to the very end, to add to the great heritage of beauty that had been accumulating since the days of Lanfranc. Most of the examples will inevitably be taken from buildings that still exist, at least in ruin, but it must never be forgotten that some of the most magnificent have disappeared to the last stone, and have left scarcely a trace in the records of the time. At Canterbury, where there had been something of a pause since Chillenden's day, the great central tower, known as the Angel Steeple from the gilt figure that once surmounted it, or Bell Harry from Eastry's great bell that hung within it, and which Erasmus was one of the first to note with admiration as he caught its gleam on approaching the city, was erected by Prior Goldstone II, c. 1495. At Gloucester, another far-seen church received its most familiar feature, the tower, c. 1460, and the noble Lady Chapel was completed c. 1500. Building at Gloucester was, indeed, almost continuous, and Leland could note that 'one Osberne, celerer of Gloucester, made of late a fayre new tower or gate-house at the south west part of the abbey cemiterye'.1 At Winchcombe, not far away, ' Richard de Kidderminster, the last abbot saving one, did great cost of the church, and enclosed the abbey towards the towne with a maine stonewall',2 while a dozen miles away in the Vale of Avon * Clement Lichfield, the last abbot of Evesham save one, did very much cost in building of the abbey and other places longing to it. He builded much about the quire in adorning it. He made a right sumptuous and high square tower of stone in the cemitory of Eovesham',3 which still stands as evidence of the abbey's St Martin's summer of prosperity. At Westminster the greater part of the nave received its roof and vault at the hands of Abbot Eastry (1471-98) and thefinalbay and west front, with the pavement beneath, were completed by Abbot Islip within a few months or weeks of his death. At Peterborough Abbot Kirton's 'New Building* with its fan vaulting recalling the nearby chapel of King's College was completed c. 1528. Away in the west at Sherborne the nave was reconstructed and the aisles and nave vaulted with the beautiful fantracery from 1475 to 1504, and the eastern extension of the chapel of St Mary-le-Bow achieved. At Bath almost the whole framework of the abbey as it stands to-day was the work of the last priors, continuing that of Bishop Oliver King and, as is well known, their work was unfinished 1 Leland, Itinerary, ed. L. Toulmin-Smith, 11, 62. 2 Ibid. 54.

3 Ibid. 52.

SOME MONASTIC ACTIVITIES

23

1

at the Dissolution. At Glastonbury no enumeration can take the place of Leland's matter-of-fact but strangely impressive account of what must have been the most magnificent complex of purely monastic buildings in England, if not in Europe. Richard Bere abbate [he writes] buildid the new lodging by the great chambre caullid the kinge's lodging in the galery. Bere buildid the new lodginges for secular prestes and clerkes of our Lady. Abbate Bere buildid Edgares chapel at the est end of the chirch, but Abbate Whiting performid sum part of it. Bere archid on bothe sides the est parte of the chirch that began to cast owt. Bere made the volte of the steple in the transepto, and under 2 arches like S. Andres crosse, els it had fallen. Bere made a riche altare of sylver and gilt: and set it afore the high altare. Bere cumming from his embassadre out of Italie made a chapelle of our Lady de Loretta, joining to the north side of the body of the chirch. He made the chapelle of the sepulchre in the southe end Navis ecclesie whereby he is buried sub piano marmore yn the south isle of the bodie of the chirch. He made an almose house in the north part of the abbay for vii or x poora wymen with a chapel.2 Some of those who worked as young men on the masonry of these edifices may well have earned good wages for pulling them down. Other orders had been as active as the black monks. The Cistercian churches had in general been little altered since the great rebuilding epoch of 1180-1250, but in their last phase some of the abbots fell in with the fashion of their age and gave their church the tower which Cistercian statute had successfully forbidden in earlier centuries. A familiar example still standing is at Fountains, the work of that able man, Marmaduke Huby. Across the Pennines at Furness the western tower was still unfinished in 1536. The canons also indulged in western towers, as at Shap (c. 1500) and Bolton, where the tower was begun c. 1520 and never completed. Within the churches also beautiful things continued to accumulate: woodwork at Cleeve, chantries such as those of Tewkesbury, Peterborough and Bath; Wallingford's chantry and retable at St Albans, Islip's chantry at Westminster, Ramryge's chapel at St Albans, Lichfield's two chapels at Evesham.3 More numerous still and perhaps more characteristic of the age were the domestic buildings. Many have disappeared, many have been embedded in or absorbed by mansions, but a few remain. Two houses perhaps stand out in the memory above all others. The one is St Osyth's in Essex, where that great builder, Abbot Vyntoner, raised his majestic gateway and parish church and abbot's house in the rose-coloured East-Anglian brick and flint; the other at Forde on the confines of Dorset and Devon, where 1 Ibid. 1, 144: 'The residue of it [sc. Bath Abbey] was syns [Oliver King] made by the priors of Bath: and especially by Gibbes the last prior ther, that spent a great summe of mony on that fabrik.' 2 Ibid. 289—90. 3 For notes on these and other chantries, with illustrations of many, v. G. H. Cook, Medieval Chantries and Chantry Chapels (London, 1947).

24

THE TUDOR SCENE

Abbot Chard built his hall and door and cloisters c. 1528 and lived to surrender them a few years later. Forde, indeed, is a good example of the thoroughgoing domestic rehabilitation achieved by the Cistercians in the sixteenth century. It is a witness alike to their prosperity and to their acceptance of the new standards of living. Whalley in Lancashire provides another example of a Cistercian abbot's house with all modern conveniences, but perhaps the most notable extant example of reconstruction is at Cleeve in Somerset. Here the disappearance of the lay brethren, the increase in domestic amenities and the conventional position of the abbot were all frankly recognized in a scheme of architectural conversion. The long refectory, perpendicular to the south alley of the cloister, was dismantled and replaced by a smaller but more elegant hall parallel to the cloister wralk and raised, like some of the black monk and college halls, on an undercroft; it was completed with staircase, screens and a large fireplace. At the same time the western or lay brothers' range was converted into an abbot's house, and a new inner gateway built. The black monks meanwhile were putting up domestic buildings fast. A notable example, still extant, is the mellow prior's house and infirmary at Much Wenlock; minor examples abound, such as the gatehouse block at Montacute and the abbot's house at Muchelney. Where buildings have disappeared record often survives, sometimes in an unexpected place such as a commissioners' report of 1536. To those familiar with the sad tales of the visitation documents, with their leaking roofs, windswept dorters and dilapidated cloisters, and with the caustic comments of Layton or Legh on the dirt and squalor, the sober notes of these men may come as a surprise. The entries that follow are from the commissioners of Leicestershire, Norfolk, and Wiltshire: Owston. Moche of yt newe made with ffreston not fully fynesshed. Ulverscroft. Muche of yt withyn this iij yeres newe sett upp and buylt. Buckenham. The house newly built and in marvelous good reparacion. Maiden Bradley. Church and mansion with all the housing in good reparacion newly repayred and amendyd. Stanley. In very good state part newe builded.1 The same commissioners had their criticisms of some of the other houses, but these extracts show that the superiors, even of the smaller monasteries, had often both the money and the will to repair and remodel their home up to the very end of its existence. III. MONASTIC PRINTING PRESSES

In the centuries when the monasteries were the main, if not the sole, reservoir of learning in western Europe, the monks were also the principal agents in the material production of books and writing of all kinds. By 1 For Owston, v. PRO, E 36/154/49; Ulverscroft, ibid. 51; Buckenham, PRO, S.C. 12/33/29, m. 2; Maiden Bradley, S.C. 12/33/27, m. 2; Stanley, ibid. m. 2V.

SOME MONASTIC ACTIVITIES

25

the time that printing had begun to replace writing by hand, the monks as a class had ceased to be leaders in the intellectual life of the age and to take any notable part in the physical production of books. It was, therefore, scarcely to be expected that the monasteries of England would play a leading part in the development of the new art of printing, all the less so in view of the banausic character of the craft in its earlier appearances. As it happened, only three English monasteries, so far as is known, were in any way connected with printing-presses: they were Abingdon, St Albans and Tavistock, and only in the last-named is there any evidence that the work was done by a monk. At St Albans, however, two presses were at work, separated in their activity by an interval of at least forty years. The subject is of considerable interest, and a few words will be said about all these ventures, but a true perspective will only be maintained if it is remembered that most of the early presses were very small affairs, resembling the amateur or 'toy' presses of to-day. They could be loaded upon a packhorse and moved from place to place like other heavy luggage. It was only by degrees that printing attained industrial status in the offices and workshops of Venice and Basel.1 The earliest by far of the monastic presses was that of the schoolmaster of St Albans, who worked between c. 1479 and i486.2 There is no certainty that he worked in the abbey precinct or that he was in any way patronized by the monks. He uses as his mark the saltire on a shield, which both town and abbey used as their arms. Nevertheless, the likelihood certainly is that he was patronized in some way by the abbey. His activities, as they are known to us, fall into two phases. In the first, 1479-81, he printed school books, including the Nova Rhetorica, compiled a year or two previously at Cambridge by the Italian Franciscan Lorenzo di Savona.3 In the second, 1483-6, he launched out into more ambitious work, printing the Chronicles of England and the celebrated Book ofSt Albans, with its treatises on field sports and heraldry, which gave the printer occasion to use coloured inks. It was forty years after this that the next in date of the monastic presses began work in west Devon. This was set up in Tavistock Abbey by the monk Thomas Richard, who had studied at Gloucester College from 1507 to 1515, when he proceeded B.D.4 He was encouraged, but not neces1 Books, monographs and handlists dealing with early printing in England are legion. For the presses under review the best general account is perhaps still that of E. G. Duff, English Provincial Printers to i55j. 2 The most complete account of the first press at St Albans is in the article, 'Printing', by H. R. Plomer, in VCH, Herts, iv, 258-61 (1914). He disposed of the opinion, then recently propounded, that the press of'Seynt Albon' was located in a house of that name at Westminster, and was set up by the schoolmaster there in collaboration with Caxton. The words apud villam S. Albania which occur in the colophon of some of the books, should surely have prevented the opinion seeing the light of day. The books produced by the first press are described with some facsimiles by E. G. Duff in Fifteenth Century English Books. 3 For Savona, v. infra, p. 53. 4 The fullest account of the Tavistock Press is that of H. P. R. Finberg, Tavistock Abbey, Appendix D, 290-3.

26

THE TUDOR SCENE

sarily financed, by his friend Robert Langdon, a Cornish gentleman from St Martin's-by-Looe, who was also responsible for choosing the first book known to have been printed. This was the old medieval favourite, now with a millennium of popularity behind it, The Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius; it was presented in a translation, hitherto unprinted, done by John Watts, a canon of Oseney in 1410. This was not the first appearance of Boece in English print, as already c. 1478 Caxton had printed Chaucer's version. Richard's book bears the date 1525, with Robert Langdon's arms in the colophon. Three years later the printer became prior of Totnes, and it is quite uncertain whether his type had been used a second time. It remained at Tavistock, however, for in 1534 there appeared a small quarto containing The Statutes of the Stannary, being the customary laws of the tinners' trade as reissued in recent sessions of the Crockentor tinners' parliaments. After this the veil falls again, though there is evidence that the press passed out of the abbey with one of the monks at the Dissolution, and was still existing in his family thirty years later. The third press was that set up at Abingdon, but here the printer was a professional, connected only accidentally with the abbey. The single book known to have been printed was a monastic Breviary of 1528, the work of John Scolar, who had published and possibly printed five books at Oxford in 1517-18. Finally, and most productive of all, there is the second press of St Albans, set up c. 1526 and very active between 1534 and 1538.1 The printer here also was a professional, John Herford, who worked under the patronage of Abbots Catton and Stevenage. The latter, who was interested in the press while still chamberer, had the family name of Boreman, and may well have been a brother of Nicholas Bourman, a London printer of the time. Herford began innocently enough with a Breviary of the use of St Albans (c. 1526) and a Lyfe and passion ofSeint Albon by John Lydgate, done at the request of Cotton. He continued with a piece written by one of the monks, John Gwynneth, entitled The confutacyon of the first part of FrytKs book (1528). Finally, in 1539, when the great abbey was tottering, he produced a tract with the suggestive title A very declaration of the bond and free wyll of man: the obedyence of the gospel and what the gospel meaneth. Stevenage, challenged by Cromwell, disclaimed all knowledge of this; 2 he sent * John Pryntare* up to London to answer to the Lord Privy Seal and the press was silent at St Albans, though Herford lived to resume business in the City. Interesting as these early printing ventures are, they provide little evidence that the English monks realized, or wished to exploit, the potentialities of the new tool. In other lands, as for example at Ottobeuron 1 V. Plomer, art. cit. 261. 2 LP, xiv (ii), 315. Stevenage to Cromwell, 12 October 1538.

SOME MONASTIC ACTIVITIES

27

under Abbot Leonard c. 1508-11, printing was undertaken as the up-todate equivalent of the earlier scriptorium, and the use of the press as a source of employment and as a contribution to the spread of learning was explicitly recognized.1 In England there is no trace of this, and without pronouncing on a might-have-been of history, and imagining the monasteries of England spared to aid in the diffusion of humanism or postTridentine theology, we may say with assurance that in this field, at least, the Dissolution did not destroy anything of value. 1 Cf. Abbot Leonard Wildemann's preface to Alcuin's De Sancta Trinitate, printed at Ottobeuron in 1509.

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CHAPTER III

THE CISTERCIANS For students of the last fifty years of monastic life in England the deplorable lack of any intimate or personal records of the lives and fortunes of the white monks continues from earlier times. There is no domestic chronicler or annalist, and no Cistercian has left familiar letters or biographical material. Glimpses, however, can be obtained of the overhead organization of the order from the collection of letters received from English correspondents by the abbot of Citeaux,1 and from the scattered references to this country in the acts of general chapter,2 while the domestic life of the abbeys is fitfully revealed by rare visitation documents, and evidence of prosperity and changing habits is afforded by records or remains of monastic building activity. Throughout the period the Cistercians in England, Wales and Ireland were governed by the original constitutional machinery of the Carta Caritatisy modified in practice by the executive powers acquired by the abbot of Citeaux more than a century earlier and by the practice, begun during the Great Schism and maintained by the virtual isolation of England from the Continent, of entrusting the oversight of the English, Welsh and (intermittently) Irish abbeys to two or more abbots-commissary, with full powers of visitation and reform.3 By these means the primitive vertical descent of authority, which made each mother-house responsible for the discipline of daughter-foundations, was in large part abrogated, and a system of centralized national control was set up which had resemblances both to the regional 'circary' of the Premonstratensians and to the province of the mendicant friars. Besides their duties of visitation and supervision, the commissaries were responsible for collecting a tax or 'contribution', which was in essence a levy imposed on all Cistercian abbeys for the benefit of the central administration at Citeaux, though it was sometimes diverted into, or replaced by, one to assist the building and furnishing of St Bernard's College at Oxford. The appointment of the commissioners was normally in the hands of 1 These records, which passed, along with other documents from Citeaux, into the archives of Dijon, were indicated by P. Gautier, 'De l'etat des monasteres cisterciens anglais a la fin du xv siecle', in Melanges d'histoire offertes a Charles Bimont, 423-35; but this article did no more than give a brief introduction to half a dozen documents from the Archives de la Cote d'Or, without any suggestion of the richness and value of the collection. G. G. Coulton, likewise, used them occasionally but never systematically. They are now in process of being edited by Dr C. H. Talbot for the Royal Historical Society; Dr Talbot has kindly allowed me to use his transcripts, which I cite by the numbers he has given them. Their location is Dijon, Archives de la Cote d'Or, 11, H. 19. 2 Edited by Dom J. M. Canivez as Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis, vols. v and vi. 3 For this, v. RO> 11, 127-9, 168-9.

THE CISTERCIANS

29

the abbot of Citeaux, who could specify the length of the term of office, but as the general chapter had sovereign powers his dispositions could be overruled or altered, while the death of an abbot of Citeaux entailed a lapse of the commissioners' faculties. Though on the whole things ran smoothly, there are several instances of confusion.1 At the opening of our period three commissioners were in function in each of the two ecclesiastical provinces; thus in i486 England (save for the province of York), together with Wales and Ireland, was administered by the abbots of Stratford Langthorne, Combe and Cleeve; but in the early years of Henry VII it became the custom for three or two commissaries to be given authority over the whole country. Throughout the period, whoever else might be out or in, the abbots of Fountains, Stratford Langthorne and St Mary Graces (London) were almost continually in office. In earlier days Rievaulx had held the primacy in the north as the eldest-born daughter of Clairvaux; Fountains rose to the first place partly, no doubt, on account of its wealth but also by reason of the outstanding personalities of the two abbots, John Darnton and Marmaduke Huby, who ruled it for half a century. In the south Warden, eldest daughter of Rievaulx, gave place to Stratford and St Mary's largely because those two houses, of which the latter was a royal foundation, were so near the political and administrative centre of the kingdom that their abbots were inevitably in close touch with the court and the hosts of other Cistercians who might visit the capital.2 When the commissioners were three in number they did not always agree. In particular, the abbot of Stratford in the last decades of the century was a difficult man to work with, and disputes arose between him and the abbot of Fountains. The abbot of St Mary Graces seems always to have been the Lepidus of the triumvirate, and to have acted from time to time as peacemaker. For more than a quarter of a century the energy, ability and prestige of Jean de Cirey, abbot of Citeaux (1476-1503) preserved continuity of policy, and it is perhaps significant that no English letters have been discovered for the dozen years following his death.3 After that, some confusion crept in. Abbot Huby, joined for a time by the abbot of Rievaulx, held office almost continuously till c. 1520, but in the south there was less stability. An interesting letter of 1517 shows the 1 The English abbots write directly to the abbot of Citeaux asking for powers as commissioners. Sometimes (e.g. in 1489 and 1495 (Canivez, v, 687, 692, nos. 43, 54; vi, 109, no. 32)) these are affirmed or confirmed by chapter, which at times also exercised its right of judging, correcting or suspending the commissioners (ibid, vi, 182, no. 43, 681—2, no. 42) but its approval does not seem to have been necessary to give the commissioners plenary authority. 2 As John Haryngton, the York lawyer and friend of the Cistercians, remarks (CZ., 57), the abbot of Fountains, nobilitate et opulenciay and the abbot of Stratford, favore regis ac dominorum spiritualium et temporaliumy will always be the most valuable agents ex qfficio for the Cistercians to use. 3 For Jean de Cirey as reformer, v. Imbart de la Tour, Origines de la Reforme, I, 504-5, and DHGy art. Citeaux.

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THE TUDOR SCENE

abbot of Fountains complaining of the multiplication of commissions.1 There used, he says, to be only two commissioners, or at most four, two from each province. Recently five have been appointed and now three others have received commissions. The abbot of Citeaux should take warning by what has happened to the English Premonstratensians. They were exasperated by the frequent bestowal and revocation of commissions, and succeeded in emancipating themselves from Premontre and in passing directly under papal jurisdiction. We hear indeed about this time of the abbots of Vale Royal, Neath and Forde as commissioners in the south in addition to those of Stratford and St Mary Graces, and as only a very few appointments are registered in the acts of general chapter we must assume that there was a certain conflict of jurisdiction between the abbot of Citeaux and the chapter. Legally, the abbots were still bound to attend the annual general chapter at Citeaux, at least at stated intervals, but wars and the Schism had long since broken the custom down, and the general leave of absence given to all English abbots in 1485 must have been a mere formality.2 The abbot of Stratford was at Citeaux some time before 1491,3 and in 1497, after a recent visit, he writes that he hopes to come every two or three years.4 Early in the sixteenth century lists of those present at Citeaux are available. Out of the whole order only some forty or fifty abbots are present, and among them from time to time occur one or two English names; the last is that of the abbot of Forde in 1518.5 Of traffic in the other direction there is little record. In 1490 Jean de Cirey proposed to visit England officially, but attempts to obtain a safe-conduct broke down.6 In 1502 there was talk of the abbot of Morimond coming, and in 1531 general chapter deputed the abbot of Chaloche to visit and reform^ and sent a letter on his behalf to Henry VIII, but at that late date there could be little hope of the king's co-operation.? The task of levying the contribution to the order was a standing charge upon the commissioners. This tax was intended to meet the overheads of administration, such as the expenses of general chapter and those of the abbot of Citeaux and his staff throughout the year. The commissioners were allowed to deduct some, at least, of their own expenses on lawsuits and other extraordinary business; the residue, if the political situation permitted, was £ent out to Citeaux through the agency of a banker. The 1 CL, 123. 2 Canivez, v, 529, no. 91: 'Omnes de regno Angliae [excusati]'. 3 Letter of 19 August 1491 (CL, 6 9 ) ' . . . quia ad vena capitulo jam antea generali adherens, nondum abbaciali nactus officio fidelitatem ultro [abbati Cistercii] promiserim'. 4 30 May 1497 (CL, 87): 'De biennio in biennium aut triennium.. .vestram visitare dominacionem, ubi teneor, diligentissime adnitar.' 5 Canivez, vi, 475 (Furness and Forde), 540 (Neath and Forde). 6 CL, 63. 7 Chapuys to the Emperor, 31 July 1531 (Spanish State Papers, iv, no. 775; Canivez, vi, 702, nos. 48-5o).

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31

yearly total at the end of the century would seem to have been fixed either at a notional figure of £76, or at the equally notional figure of £ 1 per abbey. We are never given the precise target by the commissioners, but it can scarcely be an accident that the sum of all the contributions in two successive years reached about ^74 from a total of seventy-six houses (excluding nunneries),1 and that twenty-seven houses contributed £26 in 1491 and 1492, while twenty-one abbeys sent £19. 16s. %d. in 1493-5.2 There was, however, no flat rate; and the quotas of the individual abbeys were fixed with a general, but not very clearly definable, reference to the wealth or numbers of the house. The curve rose steeply from the y. $d. of a beggarly house such as Cwmhir, by intervals of 3s. $d. or so, to the numerous class assessed at £1 and then up by stages to the £2 of rich abbeys such as Revesby.3 These figures are of 1479; by 1491 the quotas of almost all houses had decreased by a percentage varying from 10 to 30 per cent. No details have come down from the northern province, but as we know that the total came to £27 from only thirteen houses, it is probable that Fountains and Rievaulx and Furness were assessed at £ 4 or &.* The benefits accruing to England from the central government at this time were not obvious to all, though they included the maintenance of a procurator in the Roman curia and the defence of exemption against the pressure of bishops supported by monarchs. The collectors of the tax were met by loud complaints, and by the evasive and delaying tactics that confronted all medieval tax-gatherers, but the commissioners were spurred on by the knowledge that they had to render an account to headquarters, and that inefficiency might lead to a loss of their commission, which seems to have been an envied distinction. Occasionally, when times were unusually bad, they had to confess their failure ;5 in other years the money came in, but was almost wholly absorbed in litigation or in works on the fabric at Oxford; and when there was a contribution ready for despatch ordinances against the exportation of currency often prevented, or at least served as an excuse for not taking, any further action.6 When things were bad, but not wholly desperate, they sent a moiety of the total sum, or one of the abbots concerned made up the deficit from his abbey's resources.7 Failing even that, we find the abbot of Fountains sending out the constituents of a pewter table service for use at Citeaux, or even lumps of tin from which to make platters and flagons.8 In 1500 the commissioners send what they describe as a bouquet of preserved roses, lilies and violets as 1 The years are 1513-1431101 1514-15 (CL, 108, 109); an earlier list of 1478-9 gives a total of £48. iSs. 4
32

THE TUDOR SCENE 1

a token of their respect. When the complete contribution was forthcoming the abbot of Citeaux must have felt that the English connection was still a considerable asset, and if, as we are often bidden, we give to economic bonds and motives a strength above all others, it is a remarkable proof of the strength of the bonds of Cistercian charity that till within sight of the Dissolution the English abbeys were willing to send abroad an annual gift of £76, without hope of anything in return. After the regular business of collecting and forwarding the annual collection and accounts the visitors had to wrestle with the perennial troubles of St Bernard's College. It is strange that the Cistercians, who were the first of the old orders to frequent both Paris and Oxford, should have been the last to get their college built, furnished and shipshape. As late as 1489 only one-third of it had been erected.* The period opens, however, not with building schemes, but with the vagaries of Richard Archbold, an Irish monk, who practised alchemy and wrote to the abbot of Woburn that he had at last been successful in turning the moon into the sun, that is to say, he had made gold out of a mixture of metals.3 He gave figures to show that by ploughing back his gains into additional apparatus he could treble his output in a year. Meanwhile, with him, as with other men of genius, base coin is the chief need, and he appeals into the void for a loan of £5 to tide him over the winter; it will be refunded two or three times over next Easter or Whitsuntide. Archbold, like other inventors, was an expensive customer, and in 1479 had incurred debts for his degree feasts and other purchases almost equal (£50) to the whole contribution from the southern province. It is not surprising that his confreres heartily wished that he were out of the country and back in the land of his birth.4 Even with Archbold out of the way the college continued to make heavy weather. In 1482 the pro visor and students write to the abbot of Citeaux that the place has become a reproach to the order.5 Some years later, Marmaduke Huby took the matter in hand and in 1495 sought permission of the chapter to organize a collection of books, a dozen or so from each house, for the benefit of St Bernard's, and in the following year he tried to raise a subscription for the college.6 More than twenty years later the building is still going forward; Huby has finished the hall and chapel, and the last quarter of the college is almost complete.7 1 CL, 105 (20 August 1500): 'Et quanquam viole hiis in partibus hoc praesertim anni tempore jam in[?de]crescunt, rosas tamen perpaucas artificiose non absque difficultate conservantes, quibusdam interjectis liliorum floribus, pro intersigno filialis dilectionis... transmittere decrevimus.' In the first edition (1959) of this book I was simple enough to take the floral terms literally, thereby missing Huby's witticisms. Dr C. H. Talbot has pointed out to me that rosae are rose nobles and Rlia florins (? or icus). 2 CL, 5 3, Abbot Darnton of Fountains writes: * collegium... adhuc... in terdam partem vix advectum'. 3 CL, 6: 'Ita quod luna sit in solem conversa.' The date is 1470. 4 CL, 16: 'Adeo se disposuit erga fratres, quod quasi omnes vellent quod esset extra patriam nostram, et quod remearet in terram nativitatis suae.' 5 CL, 31, of 11 May 1482. 6 CL, 30, in 1495. The request was granted by chapter (Canivez, vi, 108, no. 31). 7 Cf. letters of 1517 from Huby and Abbot William of Rievaulx (CL, 116, 120).

THE CISTERCIANS

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In the matter of discipline the powers of the commissioners were apparently plenary. They had the duty and right of visitation, with powers of deposition, and at elections they took the place originally reserved for the abbot of the mother-house. Of the numberless visitations of the fifteenth century record of only one survives in the archives at Dijon. It contains the comperta and injunctions of a visitation of Warden in 1492 by the abbots of Stratford and St Mary Graces, acting as commissaries of the abbot of Citeaux,1 and it is worth remarking that both received a year later a laudatory testimonial from the York lawyer and friend of the white monks who has already received mention; he recommended the abbot of Citeaux to retain them in office.2 The comperta at Warden are somewhat disturbing.Besides accusations of bad attendance at choir, hasty recitation, failure to observe the rules of diet and of the closure of the dormitory at night, together with complaints of heavy rainfall (plurimum pluit) in the church, there is a consensus of testimony to more serious matters. Women of questionable character are allowed into the monastic buildings and even reside there.3 Two of the brethren are accused of unchastity and one of these also of apostasy; the abbot himself is not above suspicion in this respect; he is also a bad administrator and has pawned many of the valuables of the church. It would seem that the aged prior was justified in leading off the depositions with the cautious remark that regular observance was worse than it used to be. The visitors issued a long list of injunctions setting forth regulations and penalties in full, but it is noteworthy that no individual penances were imposed. The visitation of Warden, indeed, is not reassuring. On occasion, however, the visitors acted with more decision. Abbot Huby in 1496 deposed an abbot of Strata Marcella,4 and in 1497 moved with despatch and firmness when the faction-ridden community of Furness was split into two almost equal parts. He refused to recognize either of the ambitious rivals, and persuaded the community to elect a third, Alexander Banke, a young man of thirty years.5 It was perhaps too much to hope that such a house could produce anything good, and in less than three years we find the general chapter rehabilitating Banke after his absolution from incontinence, irregularity, simony and other crimes,6 and fourteen years later still the abbot of Stratford, who had failed to get to Furness in front of Huby in 1497, reached the abbey, which was in its normal state of faction, and after getting the better of Alexander's armed retainers, put in yet another abbot.7 He proved, however, even less successful than Huby in effecting a permanent settlement; Alexander appealed to the king, and in the resulting confusion three years later the rival abbot of 1 CL, 76. Deposiciones Fratrum monasterii de Wardona. 2 CL, 82. 3 CL, 76. Dicit quod mulieres diffamate indies intrant et residenciam incongruam... faciunt at continuunt in monasterio. 4 CL, 91 (August 1496). 5 CL, 96-7. 6 Canivez, vi, 238, no. 25 (1500). 7 CL, 122 (29 April 1517).

34

THE TUDOR SCENE

Furness found himself in the Fleet.1 Furness, indeed, was probably past praying for, and its sordid end twenty years later was of a piece with its recent history. Furness, however, was in a class by itself. Elsewhere, the commissioners met with no prolonged opposition, though there are indications that old loyalties died hard. Thus the abbot of Whitland in 1496 tried to interfere with Huby's arrangements for Strata Marcella, his daughter-house; in the following year one of Huby's fellow-commissioners, the abbot of Stratford, claimed a right to order the affairs of Furness on the score of old Savigniac relationship, and, as we have seen, repeated the claim twenty years later.2 In 1500 the commissioners report that some abbots, such as the abbot of Newminster, still claim their old rights, and that they are being warned away from Roche and Pipewell.3 How far the system of visitation worked in less desperate cases cannot, in default of evidence, be known. The accounts of only two visitations have survived, those of Warden (1492) given above, and Thame (1526), mentioned elsewhere;4 here it is enough to remark that neither affair shows the visitors in a very favourable light. As for the state of discipline in general, we have part of a memorandum from the abbot of Combe written in 1521, in which he begs the abbot of Citeaux to enforce in every way possible the enclosure of the cloister. The presence of women in the monastic buildings, he says, and even their residence with their families in the offices of the monastery, where they dispense hospitality to the monks, is ubiquitous and is a menace to the order besides being a public scandal.5 The detecta at Warden in 1492 bear the abbot of Combe out, and it seems more than likely that it was this case that prompted the chapter of 1489 to remark that some British houses were in such a state that unless swift action were taken regular discipline would perish. A petition was in consequence made to the abbot of Citeaux to visit the country in person.6 He did his best to go, and Huby did his best to obtain a safeconduct for him, but it was refused for what would now be called' security reasons'.7 On another level, the efforts of some abbots to escape from the control of general chapter are frequently mentioned; they are willing, we are told, to fall in with the desire of the bishops to put an end to exemption and are even ready to call in the assistance of the king to make them free of control. 1 CL, 122 (29 April 1517). He writes, *e carceribus by flet\ 2 CL, 96 (10 August 1497); cf. 122. 3 Canivez, vi, 2^5—6, no. 22; CL, 105. 4 For Warden, v. supra, p. 33; for Thame, v. infra, p. 70. 5 CL, 129. Failing this prohibition, he says: *nunquam erit religionis honestas nee monasteriorum observantia in reputacione, quia multorum fuit et est ruina. . .quia non solum intrant.. .monasteria et loca tam regularia et alia sed eciam commorantur cum tota familia in diversis locis ordinis adeo prope claustra quod religiosi cum ipsis in suis mansionibus et ipsae cum religiosis confabulando, potando et omni hora diei... frequentando \ 6 Canivez, v, 687, no. 43. 7 Both the abbot of Stratford and Marmaduke Huby, acting for his abbot, seem to have made sincere efforts to obtain the safe-conduct {CL, 63).

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This was in 1489 and 1490; similar attempts at defection c. 1517 are mentioned by Abbot Huby.1 In this miscellaneous and haphazard collection of documents from England one personality stands out from the list of names; it is that of Marmaduke Huby, abbot of Fountains from 1494 to 1526. He first appears in 1488 as collecting the subsidy for the abbot of Citeaux on behalf of his own abbot, John Darnton, then a commissioner.* Darnton himself was a man of note, prudent, discreet and loyal, the most influential white monk of his day, zealous for the honour of his order and of high repute with all.3 On his death in 1495 the pro visor (or prior) of St Bernard's College quotes Propertius and Solon to illustrate his posthumous fame.4 Huby, however, had a still higher reputation. His family, it seems likely, was established in York,5 and he himself must have taken the habit at Fountains soon after 1460, for he tells us, in an autobiographical passage in one of his letters, that he was professed c. 1463, and that he began to take part in the administration of the order thirteen years before he became abbot, i.e. in 1482.6 As abbot Darnton's bursar and confidant— 'his Marmaduke'7—he accomplished reforms in Wales, and he succeeded as a matter of course to the abbacy in 1495. Thenceforward traces of his activity and tributes to his virtues abound. The provisor of Oxford asserts that no abbot of his time can bear comparison with him,8 and twenty years later the abbot of Rievaulx is singing his praises.9 During the greater part of his period of office he was commissioner and visitor, and his energy 1 CL, 58, 65. John Haryngton, the York lawyer, is insistent on the point. He testifies to the zeal and ability of Cardinal Morton. Huby in 1517 notes the presence of' inventores novitatum et malorum, qui in Romana curia satagebant ordinem nostrum hie in Anglia per exempcionem Romano pontifici eidem immediate subicere et matrem nostram Cisterciensem ab omni jurisdictione ordinaria penitus excludere'. He blames Cardinal Bainbridge for encouraging this {CL, 123). 2 CL, 49; a letter of Abbot Darnton to the abbot of Citeaux. 3 Haryngton writes of him as 'ordinis zelatorem et vestrae patemitati filium obsequentissimum ac generaliter virum laude et virtute in ordine dignum' {CL, 22 July 1493). 4 CL, 83,12 August 1495. The quotation is from Propertius, in, i, 24: 'Maius ab exequiis nomen in ora venit/ Propertius was unknown to medieval England; the editio princeps appeared in 1471. 5 The Yorkshire antiquary J. S. Walbran, who edited the first volume of the Memorials of Fountains Abbey for the Surtees Society in 1863, gave what information he could discover about Huby on pp. 151 seqq. A William Huby of the city of York witnesses a Fountains indenture in Huby's day. Walbran gives the abbot's reputed arms (p. 153) and notes that a copy of the Coucher Book executed in 1509 is in B.M. Add. MS. 18, 276. The date of his profession is given approximately in an English letter to Lord Dacre written ?1523~4 {Memorials of Fountains, 1, 239-42): ' I have beyn professyd in this Monastery of Fontaynes by the space of iiixx yeres.' 6 CL, 120, of 19 April 1517. He writes as bursar in 1489 {CL, 52). 7 The phrase is Haryngton's in 1493: 'Quid opus est verbis de eo \sc. Darnton] aut suo Marmaduco?' {CL, 82). 8 CL, 83: 'Neque esse neque temporibus nostris fuisse abbatem huic reverendo patri comparandum.' 9 CL, 119, of 17 April 1517: 'Cultor disciplinae, plantator religionis.. .et ruinarum domorum sedulus et novus reparator.. .certi enim sumus quod nullus in regno nostro Angliae tantam experienciam habet.' 3-2

36

THE TUDOR SCENE

and prestige made him the natural leader of his colleagues. He had differences with them and acted on occasion without their counsel, but the quarrels were always adjusted, and to the last his contemporaries clearlyregarded him with admiration and respect. His official letters, though they reveal little of his personality, show a man of university training, not without some sparks of wit.1 He stood high in favour with Henry VIP and twenty years later was on good terms with Wolsey, whom he advised the abbot of Citeaux to sweeten with letters of confraternity illuminated with elegance.3 He tells us that when he became abbot in 1495 there were only twenty-two monks at Fountains, whereas when he wrote (c. 1520) there were fifty-two professed, of whom forty-one were priests and the others in major orders. This is a remarkable achievement, even if in the same letter he tells of domestic caballing on the part of a monk who hoped to succeed Huby if he died or resigned—which he had not dreamt of doing4 —and it throws welcome light on the only sphere of Huby's activities hitherto familiar to historians. He has long, indeed, been known as a great builder: every serious visitor to the ruins has been aware of his name as that of the builder of the great tower which, whatever may be thought of its architectural or religious propriety,^ dominates every view of Fountains and even appears, when seen from a distance over the fields, as if rising out of the earth when all else is hidden in the narrow valley. The tower and the adjoining transept are marked with Huby's initials and arms, and are decorated with sentences chosen by him from the Cistercian liturgy.6 In addition to the tower, he rebuilt part of the infirmary, providing additional private rooms for the sick; he almost doubled the accommodation in the abbot's lodging; he built, or at least largely rebuilt, the misericord and the gallery connecting the infirmary complex with the church; 1 Huby's trick of quoting Scripture, and especially the Old Testament, seems to reflect a training in the schools. His favourite witticism is the use of circumlocution for the English coin known as the angel (value 6s. $d.); e.g. in 1517 he sends to Citeaux 'sexaginta de angelicis spiritibus illius ordinis et ierarchie cujus sanctus Michael tenet primatum'. The 'angel' on the coin was St Michael. (CL, 120.) 2 The abbot of St Mary Graces remarks in 1497: 'habet cum omni gracia dominum regem faventissimum'. Cf. Huby's account of his interview in the same year with Henry, when the king regretted the absence of lay-brethren among the Cistercians, and offered to provide half a dozen. (CL, 97, 98.) 3 CL, 123. Huby cannot speak too highly of Wolsey: 'Virum sapientissimum... insignem justiciae cultorem, pauperum et oppressorum relevatorem precipuum.. .consulimus... ut littera suffragalis de confraternitate sapienter, pulchro dictamine ornata ac formosa manu scripta fiat.' 4 CL, 125: 'quod nondum facere cogitavimus'. Leland, Itinerary, 1, 80-1, says Huby intended to found a 'cell' at Ripon, possibly to take some of the overflow or restless element from Fountains. 5 An early (1157) Cistercian statute forbade steeples and belfries (Canivez, 1, 61, no. 16). Aesthetically, we may question the wisdom of placing a single lofty tower at the end of the north transept, or indeed of building a tower at all in a narrow valley. The original low tower over the crossing was in decay. 6 For an excellent description of the buildings at Fountains, with an elaborate plan, v. art. by Sir W. H. St J. Hope in YAJ, xv (1900), 269-402. Hope distinguishes all the remains of Huby's work.

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and he added ovens and other fittings to the infirmary kitchen. His domestic buildings can usually be recognized by their characteristic white limestone. Marmaduke Huby stands out as by far the most distinguished Cistercian abbot of his age, and as the last of his race. We have no means of knowing whether he added to his gifts as an administrator the rarer gifts of a spiritual father, and we cannot guess how he would have confronted the crisis which he did not live to see, and in which his successors at Fountains made such a poor showing. No grave-slab of his has been found; his bones in all probability lie beneath the floor of the chapter house; his monument is the tower which still, in the 'surprise view' of the abbey, seems to stand as a living presence. Among the other abbots who come fitfully into view in the Cistercian letters are those of Cleeve and Forde, both of whom, like Huby, can be found also to have left their mark upon stone. The earlier in date is Humphrey, abbot of Cleeve for some years before 1488 and later abbot of Beaulieu. He may well have been responsible for initiating the wholesale adaptation of his abbey to contemporary needs by constructing the large and beautiful refectory parallel to the cloister on the model of a black monk hall.1 The other, the abbot of Forde, who first appears as commissioner in 1513 and is still holding the post in 1527, is Thomas Chard, who must rank among the greatest builders of his day, and whose hall and gateway and unfinished cloister, in which the rich panelling and fan vaulting of Tudor Gothic is set off with a frieze of Renaissance motifs, all built in the honey-coloured Ham stone, were scarcely handselled by his monks and guests before they were surrendered.2 Chard appears in the letters as a somewhat ambitious administrator; he was concerned with the completion of the Oxford college, where he had probably himself resided, rather than with monastic reform, but it is interesting to note his attendance in person, with a single companion and ally on each occasion, at the general chapters of 1515 and 1518 at Citeaux.3 When all the fresh evidence from the Citeaux letters and the acts of chapter is added to the scattered testimony of buildings, the impression is received of a body better organized, better disciplined, and more firmly tied to the foreign centre of authority than has hitherto been realized. When all allowance has been made for the official and formalized character of the evidence, which may give an impression of order and regularity as deceptive in one direction as the mean and spiteful gossip of the visitation records is on the other, this impression, strengthened by the half-seen figures of the abbots of Fountains and Combe and Stratford, is not one of chaos or degradation. It does, however, reveal a flaw which, 1 For Cleeve, v. Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological Society•, xxxv (1889), 83-120; LXXVII (1931), 37-47; cf. also supra, p. 24. 2 For Chard's buildings, v. Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, West Dorset. 3 Canivez, vi, sub annis. His companions were the abbots of Furness and Neath. The abbot of Furness was presumably the unsatisfactory Alexander Banke; the abbot of Neath, of whom Huby disapproved, was an ally of Abbot Chard.

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THE TUDOR SCENE

like the contemporary devolution of power practised by the papacy, might pass unnoticed in a static society, but which proved fatal in a time of change and crisis. The English Cistercians, like the English Premonstratensians, had no anchor in foul weather. Citeaux, which in earlier centuries could give at least some advice and protection, let the cable slip when the storm broke; the commissioners of the moment thus lost their canonical stay, while lacking any constituent support from among their brethren; the white monks therefore were left in utter isolation to face the wolf who, as the medieval proverb had it, was not terrified by sheep, however numerous they might be.

39 CHAPTER IV

THE P R E M O N S T R A T E N S I A N S Though records of the white canons are scanty during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we are fortunate in possessing, for the last quarter of the fifteenth, the copious register of visitations and other documents compiled by Richard Redman, abbot of Shap from 1458 to 1505 and bishop successively of St Asaph (1471-95), Exeter (1496-1501) and Ely (1501-5), who from 1459 t o ^ s death was commissary-general for the abbot of Premontre in England and visitor of the English province, over whose triennial chapters he was ex officio president.1 Richard Redman2 was a member of a Westmorland family which had already given more than one of its sons to public affairs. He was in all probability the great-grandson of Sir Richard Redman, Speaker of the House of Commons. The seat of the family was at Levens, near Kendal, where the Elizabethan mansion, with its formal gardens, still preserves the family name in one of its rooms, though the estate had already passed to others when the present house was built. Redman became a canon of St Mary Magdalen in the Valley of Shap, not many miles distant among the fells, and was while still young elected abbot. His great administrative talents were speedily recognized, and within a year he was acting for the abbot of Premontre, who continued from time to time to give him commissions until he was permanently appointed commissary-general. He had in the meantime acted for the king, and in 1471 was appointed to St Asaph, retaining nevertheless the comparatively wealthy abbey of Shap. Irregular as was this proceeding, it probably sprang from the desire of all concerned to retain Bishop Redman as visitor and president of the English * dreary' or province, and until his death the bishop maintained the keenest interest both in his abbey and in the order. He accomplished his duties as visitor with exemplary regularity, despite all other 1 The documents quoted are contained in Redman's Register (Bodl. MS. Ashmole 1519) and in the eighteenth-century antiquary Peck's transcript of a supposedly lost Registrum Premonstratense (B.M. Add. MSS. 4934—8), and were printed in a conflated form by Abbot Gasquet (later Cardinal) in CS, 3 ser., vi, x, xn (1904, 1906), with the title Collectanea AngloPremonstratensia. They will be cited as CAP with references to the volume of the edition and page of the volume. A criticism of the edition will be found in G. G. Coulton, Ten Medieval Studies (3 ed. 1930, 220-6), but his list of errors is by no means exhaustive and has been greatly extended by Mr H. M. Colvin. Since this text and note were written Mr H. M. Colvin has signalized his discovery of the lost Register in Belvoir Castle Additional MS, 2 (v. JEH, vm, i). 2 For Redman, v. article in DNBy and Colvin, The White Canonsy 363-4. There is much confusion as to the date of Redman's permanent appointment as commissary-general; actually he obtained a commission for life in 1459; t n i s w a s challenged, and he received one for twelve years in 1466. Gasquet (1, xix and elsewhere) gives 1478, which is clearly wrong, as can be shown from the documents he prints. The facts are set out by Colvin, The Whitt Canons, 224-5, but the date of the final commission seems uncertain.

40

THE TUDOR SCENE

ties and offices, and visited every house with only two exceptions some six or eight times in his twenty-seven years of office.1 As the Premonstratensian abbeys were scattered over England from Blanchland hidden in the moors west of Newcastle to St Radegund's near Dover, and from West Dereham near the Norfolk coast to Halesowen in Worcestershire and Torre in Devon his task was no light one. As a rule, the bishop visited all the houses in a single progress (there are seven complete tours in his register) and travelled with great despatch, but even so the circuit occupied him for more than three months of ceaseless movement. Moreover, the procedure of a visitation was both laborious and tedious; it brought no pecuniary gain and led to no advancement. Redman must therefore be given the credit of having acted from a genuine desire to serve his order and the cause of religion. His varied activities and relationships show him to have been a man of probity and ability; he had likewise a reputation for generosity, for which the means were supplied by the revenues of his offices as abbot and bishop; a careful perusal of his injunctions gives the impression of a man sincerely interested in the welfare of individual houses and religious, and with a real desire to promote good discipline; there is nothing perfunctory about his injunctions, and he was careful to compare one house with another, and each with its own previous state. At the same time he had neither the temperament nor the spiritual fire of a drastic reformer; the impression gained of him is of one ready to follow the promptings of good nature and to accept conventional standards whenever such a choice was consistent with a fair observance of canonical form. Redman's register has a particular value not only because it includes all the houses of a homogeneous group, but also because it gives for all these houses the records of seven or eight consecutive visitations, together with lists of the communities concerned. It is therefore possible to get something like an adequate view of the state of the white canons shortly before the Dissolution. The register, moreover, has several characteristics due to the personal qualities of the compiler. The bishop was a canon himself; he knew, therefore, the spirit of his order; he was, besides, ready to praise as well as to blame; he. was willing, on occasion, to assess the relative excellence of a house among its fellows. Consequently, there is more to be gleaned from these injunctions than from the more formal, external acts of an Alnwick. On the other hand, we have only the final (and usually brief) report and injunctions of the visitor; the detecta and names of the deponents and indeed all the proces-verbalofa visitation are wanting. It may therefore well be that we are spared many trivialities and petulancies which would blur the larger issues. Redman visited at intervals of four years (sometimes every three) i Redman must have known the English countryside of the fifteenth century as well, if not better, than Leland fifty years later. Some idea of the distances he covered may be obtained from the interesting itineraries of Titchiield, printed by Professor Bruce Dickins in Proc. Leeds Philosophical Soc. iv, vi, 349-61.

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twenty-nine abbeys: all the Premonstratensian houses, that is, in England and Wales save his own house, Shap, and the remote Welsh Talley in Carmarthenshire, which he visited occasionally by proxy, the abbot and a representative canon travelling to meet him at Halesowen. By and large his injunctions when read with care give an impression considerably more pleasing than might have been expected by those familiar with the episcopal visitations of Alnwick forty years earlier and those of the somewhat later bishops of Norwich. Taken as a whole the white canons were not a decadent body, and on many occasions, covering in a few cases the whole sequence at a particular abbey, Redman remarked that all was well temporally and spiritually. Not infrequently he bestows words of the warmest praise on the house and its abbot, and on the spirit of charity and obedience that prevailed. If it is thought that Redman was by nature indulgent, it may as fairly be urged that one who was himself a member of the order, who passed so repeatedly from house to house and who was besides the president of the provincial chapter, must have gained in time a pretty fair notion of the circumstances and reputation of each house, and was therefore less likely to be baffled or hoodwinked by collusive action, obstructive silence and hard swearing than if he had been a secular diocesan visiting perhaps for the first and last time. Indeed, the impression gained from the register is that Redman had a fairly accurate notion of what was going on, even if he did not always take the drastic steps in remedy of disorders which ardent zeal might seem to demand. Of the twenty-nine houses visited some ten were entirely and continuously satisfactory. Of these Redman could write that their virtues and religious observance had been rewarded by an abundance of possessions;1 that their abbot was a new founder of the house; that all neighbours conspire to praise the place and thus cause the visitor to exult in mind;2 that there is perfect harmony between head and members3 and that all serve God devoutly in regular observance by day and night;4 that all is in flawless bloom ;5 that all thank God that they elected such an abbot as they have ;6 that not a shadow of blame, but widespread praise and fair fame is the abbey's portion;7 that he has found nothing deserving of correction;8 or even that all is so wisely ordered that Redman, were he not bound by obedience, would never come to visit the house while the present abbot held rule.9 1 CAP, 11, 42 (Barlings, 1500). 2 CAP, in, 52 (Leiston, 1494): 'Nobis non modicam infert nostre mentis exultacionem.' 3 CAP, 11, 85 (Beeleigh, 1488): 'Ibidem inter caput et membra caritas conexa est plena atque perfecta.' 4 CAP, 11, 113 (Cockersand, 1481). 5 CAP, II, 161 (Croxton, 1494): 'Omnia circa religionis observancias divina omcia et Ordinis instituta comperimus inviolabiliter reflorescere.' 6 CAP, 11 146 (Coverham, 1500). The Abbot, John Askew, had received the warmest praise in 1491, 1494, and 1497. 7 CAP, n, 229 (Hagnaby, 1488): 'Nulla alicujus criminis comperimus umbracula', etc. 8 CAP, 11, 57 (Beauchief, 1478); cf. in, 152-6 (Torre, 1494, 1497, 1500). 9 CAP, in, 223 (West Dereham, 1500). The Abbot, John Marten or Wisbeach, was highly complimented also in 1494, 1497 and 1503.

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THE TUDOR SCENE

Of the remaining twenty-odd a dozen oscillated between a state of disorder that fell short of disaster and a degree of well-being that failed to reach absolute excellence. At these houses Redman had to deal with individual cases of incontinence and apostasy, with internal discord and with considerable relaxations. He was often able, on the other hand, to note that all was well or to confine himself to small points of discipline and ceremonial, and on the whole in this group a tolerable mediocrity was more frequently noted than a dangerous decline. There remains a group of some seven abbeys1 where conditions were unsatisfactory during the greater part of the twenty-five years covered by these records, or where at one time or another a serious scandal developed. Though it would be unfair to judge the whole order by these, and equally unfair to demand of a visitor that he should be able to give to a group of weak and unspiritual characters the inner vision and moral resolve which alone could effect true reform, it nevertheless remains true that Redman must be judged, if not by his success then at least by the serious efforts made to restore regularity to these houses. It is not surprising to find that at several of them the abbot was guilty of immoral conduct, while in one or two cases the whole body was infected with corruption. The abbey of Langley may serve as an instance.* This house, a fairly large one in Norfolk, must count as one of the least satisfactory of all. When first visited by Redman in 1478 it was ruled by an aged and incapable abbot. The bishop gave two canons charge of the spirituals and temporals of the place, sent a canon convicted of incontinence to Titchfield, and imposed penances on two apostates. Four years later the abbey had a new head and a worse one. Abbot Minding was justly accused of incontinence and dilapidation. Redman took the same course as before and appointed two administrators, the subprior and novice master. In 1488 the latter had become abbot and the bishop was able to express his satisfaction at the excellent state of the house. In 1491 conditions were less satisfactory, and in 1494 Abbot Alpe in his turn was accused of incontinence and dilapidation. On the former charge he was able to establish a technical innocence, though Redman's injunctions make it clear that he was seriously to blame;3 on the latter he failed to justify himself, and a series of injunctions was directed towards limiting any further dissipation of property. Three years later Alpe had bettered the financial and economical position, but three years later again the whole house was an object of scandal to the neighbourhood; besides charges of 1 Viz. Eggleston (Yorks), Langley (Norfolk), Lavendon (Bucks), Newhouse (Lines), St Radegund's (Kent), Sulby (Lines), and Welbeck (Notts). The distribution of these houses forbids any judgment as to the relative decline of any particular district. 2 CAP, in, 15-30. 3 CAP, in, 25—6: 'Minime comperimus ex rei veritate prout publica circumvolat infamia . . . attamen. . . mandamus quatenus dicte mulieris consortium.. . evitet, ulterius in monasterio suo nullo modo venire aut remanere permittat', etc.

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1

incontinence against the abbot and others, and cases of apostasy, there had been a conspiracy against the abbot. It is surprising to find Redman postponing action till the next visitation; he may perhaps have seen no way of getting the better of the moral chaos that prevailed. In any case, two years later Langley was in the depths of distress, and at last Abbot Alpe resigned, to be replaced by an outsider, Abbot Curlew of Lavendon, whose reputation had in the past been rudely blown upon, and who was once more accused and deposed at Langley in 1509. Lavendon, indeed, an abbey in northern Buckinghamshire, had a history almost as unfortunate as Langley.2 At Redman's first visitation in 1482 he had found a whole series of irregularities, among which was the conduct of the cellarer, this very William Curlew, who was charged with illicit relations with a named woman and with enriching his relations at the expense of the monastery's property. He succeeded in clearing himself technically of the first charge; Redman's injunctions show that he considered the second well founded. Six years later the whole fabric was in ruins, and in 1491, when Curlew had become abbot, two canons, one being the subprior, were convicted of incontinence. Three years later two were again convicted—one being again the subprior, whose punishment had been remitted previously, but who now had added to his misconduct an endeavour to poison his abbot. In 1500, however, the abbey was in better condition. The three offenders of the past had disappeared in manners unspecified, and Curlew had sunk the debts. It was shortly after this that he was elected to Langley. A third example may be taken in Welbeck, the largest and proudest of the Premonstratensian foundations and the mother-house of a large family. Here we can trace the curve of prosperity through more than one sweep. At the earliest visitation all was in an excellent state under the aged Abbot Green.3 Twelve years later, under Abbot Burton, a decline had set in; canons were sleeping outside the common dormitory, indulging in archery, and hunting in Sherwood. Four years later the collapse was complete; the house was ruined by the abbot's dilapidations; he himself was living incontinently and supporting his children on abbey revenues; he was besides gaming daily. There were two other cases of incontinence, together with apostasy and rebellion. Redman acted with firmness and deposed the abbot forthwith. Four years later things were mending, and in 1491, despite certain relaxations, the visitor was satisfied and could speak of the abbot as a second founder of the house. Henceforward, Welbeck was in good condition. In addition to cases where the abbot was guilty of some canonical fault, 1 CAP, in, 29-30: 'Ne de cetero quoquomodo convencionem sive colloquium habeat cum ilia muliere qua nuper permaximum contraxit scandalum, at non merito.' The last three words are contradicted by the context and are possibly a misreading or copyist's reduplication of the three that immediately follow, viz. aut cum marito ejusdem. 2 CAP, in, 35-42. 3 CAP, in, 177—96. The first visitation (1462) must have been one of Redman's earliest.

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THE TUDOR SCENE

or where the house was in so decadent a state as to argue culpable negligence in its head,1 Redman as visitor had to deal with a number of individuals guilty of apostasy2 or charged with incontinence. Such cases amount to some forty in all,3 excluding abbots. In a few instances the accused succeeded in establishing a technical innocence; the rest either failed to secure the requisite number of confreres to swear to their innocence, or spontaneously admitted their guilt. Careful readers of the register will no doubt differ in their judgments as to the adequacy of the punishment and the efficacy of the means employed in the enquiry and in the execution of the sentence. A wise authority would certainly draw a distinction between an isolated lapse of passion for which repentance was sincere, and a repeated fault or promiscuous relations with women. In the latter cases, protestations of repentance, however fervent, would carry little weight. The subsequent history of a number of these Premonstratensian cases shows that Redman erred, if at all, on the side of leniency. Whether this leniency amounted to complaisance, and whether the punishments (in particular that of exile) nominally inflicted were in fact enforced, can to some extent be ascertained by checking the culprit's movements from the lists of the houses. Whatever may be the judgment of a modern critic in a matter of discipline, which all must admit to present very great difficulties, it would at least seem clear that efforts to mend matters and the success attending these efforts were greater among the white canons than among any other body of monks and canons, the Carthusians alone 1 References may here be given, for the sake of completeness, to the remaining cases where superiors were gravely at fault. At Beauchief in 1462, as the result of an appeal from the abbot of Welbeck, the mother house, Redman with the abbot of Welbeck and another held a formal trial of Abbot Downham, accused of dilapidation, rebellion, incontinence and other misdemeanours, and deposed and excommunicated him, along with his accomplices (11, 49-50). At Eggleston in 1502 two abbots deputizing for Redman at what appears to have been an extraordinary visitation found the abbey, both head and members, in a state of sickness. They commanded the abbot to reform himself under pain of deposition, but withheld sentence till the next visitation, of which no record survives (11, 221—2). At St Radegund's in 1497 abbot and community were at loggerheads with serious counter-accusations. Redman reserved judgment till the next provincial chapter. What happened there does not transpire, but in 1500 the abbot was accused of incontinence with loose women, and of frequenting taverns, where his ribald behaviour was a source of annoyance to the other habitues of the bar (singulos audientes tedio maximo afficiens). He was ordered to show discretion in his visits to layfolk and hostelries (ne festivis diebus sive aliis, nisi tempore congruo, tabernas. . .frequentet (ill,

IO3-5))2 Apostasy, in the technical language of Redman's visitations, is absence without leave from the monastery precinct for some length of time, usually accompanied by temporary abandonment of the regular habit. 3 It is not clear how Gasquet obtained his figure of eighteen cases of incontinence (CAP, 11, introd. xxii: 'Eighteen at most charged with any crime whatsoever against morality'). Apparently he is only reckoning culprits in the houses contained in his vol. 11, though he gives the total of all canons in all houses when he endeavours to establish a percentage of crime, and by 'charged' he means ' convicted'. When he judges that those who succeeded in finding colleagues to swear to their 'innocence' were guilty of no crime whatsoever against morality, he would seem to neglect the evidence of the Register, as well as to be forgetful of Christ's words in Matt. v. 28. Moral innocence and forensic guilt are not correlatives.

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excepted. But as the subject has been debated, not without warmth, by the apologists of the medieval religious and by their adversaries, it may be well to examine more closely the data afforded by the Redman documents. First, as to the procedure followed. If accusations made to the visitor were serious enough to warrant further examination, he summoned the accused and charged him with the fault. He might either confess or deny; if he denied, he was given opportunity to purge himself canonically, i.e. to obtain testimony on oath as to his innocence from five of his confreres. If he was successful in this, the visitor had in practice no alternative but to declare him innocent, however great might be his private misgivings; if he failed, or if he had previously confessed, he became technically guilty, and the visitor pronounced formal sentence of punishment, reserving its execution, if he wished, to a future date or to the cognizance of the next provincial chapter. The customary punishment among the white canons was forty days of hard penance—fasting on bread and water—and banishment to another house of the order for a period of weeks or years, or in perpetuity. Where there were aggravating circumstances, the sentence might be made more severe by imprisonment for the term of the penance, or indefinitely. Corporal punishment is not specifically mentioned, perhaps because it was a sanction within the control of the immediate superior. Such were the constitutional provisions, and they were severe enough. In practice, however, they were rarely applied in their full rigour. The culprit, when the terms of his punishment were promulgated, might promise amendment and appeal for mercy; he might also secure the intercession of his superior and some or all of his brethren. Moved by this, the visitor could suspend or even cancel his sentence. Here we are not concerned with the merits of exile as a punishment, with its probable effects on the culprit, and the mutual reactions between him and the family to which he came as a black sheep in a strange fold; we have merely to consider the manner in which this particular sanction was applied. In default of a satisfactory index and cross-references it is not easy to trace a delinquent's career in Redman's Register; the following statistics may therefore not be exhaustive. In all, twenty-three cases have been noted where a sentence of exile was pronounced;1 sixteen of these were passed on canons confessing to, or convicted of, incontinence, the remaining seven were guilty of serious rebellion or theft, or of repeated apostasy. In eight instances the sentences were remitted on the spot or its execution deferred indefinitely; of the remaining fifteen culprits three vanished altogether, presumably into apostasy, six de facto never left their i ii, 19 (Alnwick); 36 (Barlings); 66 (Beauchief); 76,78 (Bayham); 90-1, 92, 93 (Blanchland); 117, 121 (Cockersand); 130 (Coverham); 182 (Dale); 241 (Halesowen); in, 7 (Langdon); 16, 17, 24 (Langley); 39-41 (Lavendon), 68-9 (Newhouse); 112-15 (Sulby); 143 (Torre); 164 (Tupholme); 187, 189 (Welbeck); 203-7 (Wendling).

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THE TUDOR SCENE

home, and six can be traced into exile. In other words, about one in four of those sentenced actually went into exile, while two-thirds of the total stayed at home either with or without authorization, though some of these soon disappeared, either by death or apostasy. Perhaps the most disquieting feature of the matter is the frequency with which those convicted of a serious fault, and condemned to an exile to which they did not proceed, are found continuing in, or promoted to, positions of responsibility or authority. Thus William Hynmers of Alnwick,1 convicted in 1482 of dilapidation and embezzlement, and more than suspected of incontinence when warden of Brenshalgh, though condemned to deposition from office and permanent exile at Dale, is nevertheless found as rector of Brenshalgh in 1488 and 1491; Robert Wolfet of Beauchief,2 convicted of rebellion, apostasy and incontinence in 1494, is circator or roundsman of the house (quis custodiet?) in 1497 and 1500; while William Bentham and James Skipton of Cockersand, condemned to exile for incontinence in 1488, are found in 1491 as subprior and cellarer respectively of their old home.3 It is difficult to suppose that in all these cases, and in others which might be added to them, a thorough reformation of character had taken place, though in certain cases, such as that of the numerous delinquents at Newhouse in 1478, there is a fair presumption that four at least of the five implicated lived blamelessly in the sequel.4 It must be remembered in justice, also, that in small rural communities the choice of suitable candidates for office was very limited. In fine, three conclusions emerge from a consideration of all the cases; first, that punishment overtook a serious fault only in one out of every four instances; second, that a considerable number of those who remained unpunished continued in, or were subsequently appointed to, offices of responsibility; and thirdly, that of the six who went into exile five returned home, four of them to hold office, while the fifth remained in a position of trust in the house of his exile. In other words, that conviction for incontinence usually led to no serious consequences, even for officeholders, while exile, when submitted to, had no disastrous external aftereffects. Looked at more deeply, it may even be thought that only those whose repentance was sincere, and who therefore had a root of goodness in them, actually went into exile. The above statistics include only those convicted at visitation and noted in the reports. The (unfortunately incomplete) records of provincial chapters somewhat unexpectedly yield notices of various canons transferred for unspecified reasons and whose names do not always figure in Redman's injunctions. Of these we are told simply that the chapter authorize the transference of such a canon of such a house to such another house for such a period of years, but as Redman presided at all the chapters concerned he presumably controlled the agenda, and it may be I II, 19, 21, 25. 3 11, 117, 120.

2 II, 66 seqq. 4 in, 68-9.

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supposed that most of those concerned had already passed through his hands as visitor, though for some reason their names do not appear in his injunctions. We have therefore no means of knowing whether some secret or fieinous fault, or merely some temperamental incompatibility, gave cause for the transference. In all, some twenty changes are recorded, seven of which concern culprits known to us from Redman's Register; in these cases, which have already been analysed, the chapter either confirms the visitor's action or alters the destination.1 Of the remaining thirteen canons affected eight can be traced from the community lists and are seen to have changed residence as commanded; of four all trace is lost, and it may be supposed that some or all apostatized. On the whole, therefore, the commands of chapter were in general more efficacious than those of the visitor. By combining the evidence of visitations and chapters it is possible to follow the careers of several delinquent canons, and a few examples may be given here. John Lincoln, who appears in all the lists of Barlings from 1475 to 1488, and who held several offices there, was perhaps convicted of incontinence at the visitation in the latter year; the record is fragmentary, breaking off at the beginning of one such conviction. He was presumably sent to Wendling by Redman, for the chapter of ?i488 gave a permanent transference thither. At Wendling he became subcellarer, but in 1494 was convicted by Redman of incontinence and theft, and banished to Langley for ten years. The sentence was confirmed by the chapter of 1495, but Lincoln never arrived at Langley and, as he disappears from all the lists, presumably apostatized.2 Robert Bredon of Sulby was convicted in visitation in 1491 of incontinence and apostasy, and received sentence for each crime, in addition to penance of forty days, being exiled to Alnwick for seven years and to Shap for three. As the sentences clearly could not run concurrently, it is not surprising to read that Bredon burst into tears and promised amendment. The pathos of the spectacle was increased by his abbot, who joined him on his knees and mingled his tears with those of his erring subprior.3 The sentence was therefore duly suspended, and it is painful—though not perhaps surprising—to find that at the following visitation Bredon was found guilty not only of renewed apostasy and incontinence with the same partner in guilt, but of defaming his abbot to influential patrons and of appealing away from all domestic jurisdiction. For these crimes he was sentenced to an exile of ten years at St Agatha's, but at the provincial 1 1,150 (1479); J53 O485); 158-9 (^487); i<$<5 (1489); 171-2 (1492); 176-7 (M95)2 1, 153, 177; 11, 34-5; in, 204, 205. John Barlynges of the Wendling list of 1494 (in, 207) is clearly to be identified with Lincoln. 3 in, 112—13: 'Quibus [sc. Bredon and another] statim in lacrimis resolutis, misericordiam humiliter implorabant, melioris vitae reformacionem promittentibus. Et proprius illorum prelatus, coram nobis genibus flexis et similiter in lacrimis resolutus, pro eisdem veniam anxius postulabat.' Such scenes are not uncommon in the visitation records.

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chapter of 1495 he was assigned to Dale during the good pleasure of Redman. To Dale he went, and apparently made good, as in 1497 he met Redman at West Dereham in Norfolk and obtained licence to accept a chantry or similar post.1 Finally, there is the curious case of Thomas Ludham of Langley. This brother, while still a deacon in that disorderly house, had in 1491 the misfortune to cut off the right hand of a Carmelite in the course of a prolonged brawl.2 For this, in addition to forty days' penance, he was sentenced by Redman to exile and perpetual imprisonment at Sulby. He was already, it would seem, in durance at home. To Sulby he went; he was there in 1494,3 and at Redman's good pleasure. Nevertheless, he speedily returned home and in 1497 could be seen as subprior at Langley.4 From a survey of all these figures and cases we gain the impression of a centralized disciplinary organization which is certainly functioning regularly, and cannot be described as wholly ineffective. Its efficiency is, however, incomplete; too often, we cannot help feeling, a well-merited punishment was remitted as soon as imposed; too often, for whatever reason, an unremitted sentence was disobeyed or given the go-by; and too often, whatever may have been the forcible reason urged in particular cases, past delinquents are found in office. The white canons were far from being wholly decayed. The fabric of their life and the machinery of their original constitution were still in existence, but if, even under the administration of the capable and influential Redman, a lack of vigour and true zeal for justice is to be deplored, it may be feared that a less gifted and more ephemeral superior would find it hard to maintain discipline at even a passable degree of tension. A more favourable conclusion would seem to be valid in the sphere of economics. Three undoubted facts emerge from a study of Redman's visitations: first, that over the whole of the period covered the Premonstratensians as a body possessed abundant stores and credit ;5 secondly, that where debts or dilapidation were serious, an efficient abbot had little difficulty in restoring financial soundness; thirdly, that the aggregate liquid assets of the order were considerably greater at the end of Redman's life than they had been at the beginning of his career as visitor. 1 1, 176; 11, 183; in, 112, 115, 116, 222 (the date of the grant is seen to be that of the Dale visitation). Robert Bredon must not be confused with Richard, a canon of Dale. 2 in, 24: 'Diu litigantibus et tandem manus violentas alter alteri nephande inferentes, manum ejusdem fratris Carmelite infortunef!] abscidit dexteram/ 3 His name appears last in the community list (m, 25) with the addition in carcere. 4 1, 177; I " , " 6 , 28.

5 Redman's assertions to the abbot of Premontre in i486 and 1493 (1, 81-2, 91) that the English houses are temporaixbus pauperrima occur in letters where there is question of financial subscription. They may be compared with his contemporary statements in visitation, e.g. 'Necessariis peroptime ac ditissime stauratum' (in, 148; Torre, 1492); cunctarum rerum opulencia habundantissime provisum' (m, 188; Welbeck, 1488); 'in granis et cunctis animalibus habundatissime stuffatum' (in, 64; Newbo, 1497). The white canons were not, of course, rich when compared with the largest houses of black monks and Cistercians.

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Redman was visitor of the English houses in virtue of his office as commissary-general of the abbot of Premontre;1 the position carried with it the duty of convoking and presiding at the triennial provincial chapter. The acts of a number of these assemblies survive in his register, and here too a state of efficiency prevails which contrasts very favourably with the contemporary records of the black monks and Austin canons. The chapters were well attended; at some, indeed, all the abbots without exception were present,2 and although the acts are concerned chiefly with liturgical and ceremonial matters it is clear that all outstanding disciplinary cases were considered and adjudged. Each set of acts ends with a list of canons transferred from one house to another; the majority of these had already been dealt with at least provisionally by Redman in visitation, but as has been noted the chapters (acting under his presidency) often changed the destination or prolonged the exile of the culprit. The visitation records and Redman's obiter dicta give some interesting information regarding the daily life and fortunes of individual abbeys. The houses differed little in size; the very large and the diminutive communities of the black monks and black canons have no counterpart here. The largest during this period were St Agatha's (15-23 canons), Alnwick (21-26), Barlings (14-23) and Welbeck (18-24); the smallest Wendling (6-7) and Durford (8-11); the majority had an average of fifteen canons. There is no mention of conversi nor any trace in the lists; the column of names at Tupholme previously thought to be a list of conversi is an editorial blunder.3 As regards prosperity, Redman wrote of Croxton in 1497 that it surpassed all the other houses in stores of grain and number of stock; the same encomium was passed on Barlings in 1500 and Newhouse in 1503.4 Of Leiston he declared in 1488 that the liturgy was carried out there with greater solemnity and care than elsewhere, and in 1500 that all within and without was conducted in a manner more deserving of praise than at any other housed The names of unworthy heads of houses have already appeared in these pages; among those who did good things, so far as records speak, the names of Abbot Wisbeach of West Dereham,6 ot 1 Cf. the terms of the commission in I, 74-6. 2 E.g. at Lincoln in 1476 (1, 140). 3 The list (111, 160) contains thirteen names, after the priests, which occur neither in the previous (1482) nor in the subsequent (1494) list. I originally (1959) suggested these were conversi; Mr Colvin points out that the names should appear in the 1491 Croxton list (11, 160, no. 345). In general, it is by no means clear that all the canons serving churches are included in these lists. The numbers in the text include 'novices', as the title often embraces all under the rank of priest. V. also Appendix 11 in Colvin, The White Canons. 4 11, 162-3; "> 42; "I, 87. 5 in, 49, 50. 6 The encomium of Abbot Wisbeach of West Dereham (in, 223) may be quoted; it forms the whole of Redman's injunction for the visitation. 'Discretum pariter in spiritualibus et temporalibus non mediocrite.r comperimus prelatum, ad quern illud Salomonis reducere et assimilare merito possimus, Sapiens semper sapienter agit et gubernacula possidebit. Et tarn intus quam foris cuncta sic disponit, quod nisi obediencia mihi preciperet ad dictum monasterium causa reformacionis illuc diebus quo vixerit minime descenderemus. Et ut quid de debitis aliquid loquamur, cum in omnibus tam animalium universis generibus quam granis suis omnibus superexcellit predecessoribus.'

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Abbot Attercliff of Croxton (1491—1534) and of Abbot Dockett of Leiston (before 1488-1500) may be lifted for a moment out of time's oblivion. The founder of the white canons had intended his sons to combine apostolic preaching with a quasi-monastic life based on that of the Cistercians. In England, even as late as Redman's day, something of this twofold vocation had been preserved. All the abbeys held churches, and at the end of the fifteenth century many, though not the majority, were served by vicars, perpetual or casual; the remainder were occupied by canons who, if their cure was a neighbouring one, were expected to return to the abbey at night and for meals. In some cases canons also served churches which they did not own, and as for all practical purposes they were off the strength of their abbey we find Redman on occasion ordering all home,1 while, conversely, cases occurred where a temperamental canon was sent out to a church in the interest of domestic peace.2 For those of the community—never a large number—who had neither church nor office there remained manual work and claustral reading. How far serious horticultural or rural work entered into the normal life is not clear; there is, however, ample evidence that it was a practical reality, especially during the hay, grain and fruit harvest.3 That Redman should have found it necessary to insist on obedience to all commands to field and garden work does indeed show that there was a tendency to shirk, but such injunctions would have been unthinkable among the black monks and canons, and casual references to employments other than these when the weather is bad, to garden as opposed tofieldwork, and to the omission of the second daily sung Mass at harvest time and other heavy seasonal periods, shows that manual work was a reality for the white canons. Casual references, likewise, to reading in the cloister and to writing manuscripts to order show that these employments, too, still had their place.4 The Premonstratensians had never been a student order, and most of the houses fell below the twenty-mark of the Benedictine Constitutions enjoining attendance at a university. Cases occur, however, of individual canons at study.5 References to less intellectual pursuits are more frequent. At lonely houses under the fells or in the heart of Sherwood the attractions of the chase had their appeal, and Redman found it necessary on several occasions 1 E.g. 11, 97 (Blanchland). 2 in, 6 (Langdon). 3 E.g. in, 41 (Lavendon); 60 (Newbo): 'Omnibus horis diligenter insistant labori. . .et temporibus, quibus non permittit aeris temperies laborare, libris suis pro scientia adquirenda diligenter vacent/ Ibid. 85 (Newhouse, 1500): 'Fratribus omnibus et singulis precipimus quatenus tempore feni et messis ceterisque anni temporibus ad preceptum abbatis sine murmure debite laborent/ Ibid. 97-8 (St Radegund's, 1482): 'Precipimus toto conventui ut sicuti continetur in nostris statutis fratres a mane usque ad vesperam faciant opus in ortis sive ubicumque necesse fuerit/ 4 E.g. HI, 113 (Sulby): 'Qui ibidem scriptores sunt precipimus ut quicquid de suo labore deinceps adquirerint prelato presentare non necligant.' 5 in, 178 (Welbeck)—a canon to be sent to the university; in, 224 (West Dereham)— a canon to be recalled from the university to teach at home.

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to forbid the keeping of hounds, while at Sulby he noted with displeasure the fashion of keeping smaller dogs, rabbits and birds.1 At Titchfield one of the canons was in the habit of leaving the house at night to poach fish from the abbey's stews.2 Gambling was a more common fault; this usually took the form of throwing dice, but the newer game of card-playing finds mention,^ and it is somewhat surprising that tennis is more than once forbidden in a context which implies that the gambling possibilities rather than the game itself constituted its appeal.4 Architecture and the arts of decoration had a particular interest for Bishop Redman. As bishop of St Asaph, he was responsible for erecting out of dilapidation the church which can be seen to-day, and he rested in death at Ely under what is perhaps the most sumptuous tomb in the cathedral. It is therefore natural to find him often issuing instructions (which were, perhaps, less honoured than any others) for the rebuilding of churches and conventual buildings.5 As we have noted, the last decades of monastic life saw a considerable amount of new work undertaken. The Premonstratensian injunctions show this as occurring also in the last decades of the previous century; Redman had occasion in 1482 to remark on the beauty of the new buildings at Torre; at Newbo in 1491 he noted a beautiful new window at the end of the church; and at Beeleigh in 1500 he could write of the exceptionally beautiful work including a highly successful restoration of the windows.6 On the whole, it must be said that the white canons, though providing a number of distressing cases of decadence, do not give that extremely painful impression of stagnation and sordid vice that the reader of contemporary black monk and black canon visitations receives only too frequently from the records. The Premonstratensians, though not abounding in numbers and animated by no extraordinary fervour, were on the whole a well-disciplined body of which the members, with certain exceptions, lived a tolerably observant life. 1 11, 98 (Blanchland); in, 22 (Langley); in, i n (Sulby): 'Ne aliquis fratrum aves, caniculos sive cuniculos habere seu alere presumat, quia magis curiositatem quam utilitatem pretendunt.' Ibid. 181 (Welbeck). 2 in, 128: 'Nocte exeundo pisces furtive lacubus infra monasterium situatis exstraxit.' 3 in, 100 (St Radegund's): 'Lusores deciarum vel ad cardes excommunicamus.' 4 in, 35 (Lavendon): ' Nullus.. . audeat... ad tenas aliquo modo ludere...seu ad aliquem alium ludum pro pecunia.' Ibid. 150 (Torre): Ludos insuper quoscunque pro turpi lucro inhibemus, presertim ilium ludum vocatum vulgariter tenys.' Possibly 'tenys' is a game of cards or dice ('tens*) and not (as Gasquet thought) tennis. 5 E.g. at Durford in 1494 he ordered the rebuilding of the ruined cloister (n, 198); nothing had been done by 1497 {ibid. 199) or 1500 {ibid. 200-1). 6 in, 147 (Torre): 'Plura et amena.' Ibid. 61 (Newbo); n, 88 (Beeleigh): 'Perpulcras ecclesie edificaciones fenestrarumque amenas reparaciones.' Ibid, in, 224 (West Dereham): 'Palam intuencium oculis apparent magna et laudabilia.. .edificia.'

CHAPTER V

THE FRIARS IN THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY The seventy years that followed the death of the eminent Carmelite apologist, Thomas Netter of Walden {pb. 1430), make up the darkest period in the history of the English friars. Chronicles, biographies, literary work, and even theological treaties are lacking, and the fairly plentiful record material does little but tell us of the ordinations and academic successes of the friars, together with an enumeration of legacies appearing in the wills of townspeople all over England. By a significant coincidence, the two scholars who have devoted most labour to investigations in the sources of Franciscan and Dominican history use the same metaphor of sleep to describe the state of the two bodies of friars in the fifteenth century.1 Throughout the period, indeed, a small number of friars of both orders continued to be appointed to Welsh bishoprics, or to serve as suffragans to diocesans in England, but none of these made any great mark either before or after episcopal consecration. At Oxford the great controversy with the Lollards had died away, and no new crisis developed in which bishops might feel the need of a panel of expert theologians; although the Carmelite provincial, John Milverton,2 took a hand in the early stages of the affair of Reginald Pecock, the final trial was a matter for politicians rather than for theologians. At the universities it was an age of routine, if not of decadence, in philosophy and theology, and with the foundation of numerous colleges the friars lost the pride of place that had once been theirs, and became only a group among the components of the academic body. Their interests and characteristics alike prevented them from being among the first humanists, and very soon they found themselves in opposition, passive if not active, to the school of Colet and Erasmus. Numerically, however, they were still strong, and by the end of the fifteenth century they numbered some three thousand all told, a larger total than at any time since the Great Pestilence of 1348. Probably the percentage of the total number attending the schools at Oxford and Cambridge had diminished. It has been computed that at Cambridge, in the thirty-three years between 1455 and 1488, over a hundred friars were admitted to degrees ;3 at Oxford for a similar period a little later 1 Fr B. Jarrett, The English Dominicans•,151, wrote: 'Silent, dulled, asleep, they [sc. the Dominicans] took in the last century of their pre-Reformation existence hardly any place at all in the national life/ A. G. Little, in a letter to the present writer in 1941, remarked: 'After this [i.e. 1430] the province goes to sleep for fifty or sixty years/ The historian will not readily rest content with such judgments, but if we substitute some such phrase as 'remains undistinguished' for 'goes to sleep' the judgment is true enough. 2 For Milverton and William Goddard, the Franciscan minister provincial, in the affaire Pecock, v. V. H. H. Green, Bishop Reginald Pecock (index, s.vv.). 3 J. R. H. Moorman, The Grey Friars in Cambridge^ 120.

THE FRIARS IN THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY

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(1505-38, with a few records wanting) there were about one hundred and forty.1 In these numbers the Franciscans, as in the past, were the most numerous, at Oxford certainly, at Cambridge very probably. Save, however, for a few theological writings of a conventional character, scarcely anything is known of the activities of all these students. Almost the only humanist of early days is the Italian friar, Lorenzo di Savona of the province of Genoa who, while in residence at Cambridge, compiled in 1478 the Nova rhetorica that was printed almost immediately by both Caxton (c. 1479) a n d t n e printer ofStAlbans (1480).2 Forty years younger than Fra Lorenzo, but possibly his confrere for a while at Cambridge, was Richard Brinkley, an early representative of the new learning in its scholarly and orthodox form. Brinkley knew both Greek and Hebrew, and as a borrower of books which he did not return he has interested modern bibliographers; it is thus that we know of a Greek New Testament lent him by his brethren at Oxford and of a Hebrew Psalter borrowed from St Albans which contains notes in his hand.3 Brinkley, however, who ultimately became provincial of the Minors (1518-26), is almost the last representative among the friars of learning pursued for its own sake or from personal enthusiasm rather than for purposes of controversy. His contemporary, Henry Standish,4 was essentially a combatant and an inheritor of the tradition of the friars of Wyclif's day, at once opposed to doctrinal innovations and to clerical privilege. His rise, after taking his degree, was rapid. He became warden of the Grey Friars in London, and in 1505 minister provincial. Six years later he began his career as court preacher, and in 1515 found himself embroiled in the celebrated controversy with Abbot Kidderminster.5 It is worth glancing for a moment at the oft-told story of what was the last public controversy in England on a great religious issue to be conducted according to the rules that had been honoured in Europe for more than four centuries.6 When parliament was ready to meet in 1515 it was realized that one of the laws about to expire unless renewed was an act of 1512 depriving clerics not in major orders of the benefit of clergy. The bishops and higher clergy, who had never felt easy about this act, moderate and reasonable as it may seem to the modern mind, were now in the throes of the cause celebre of Richard Hunne, in which other clerical privileges were threatened, and the bishop of London, a few days before the question was to be reopened in parliament, put up the redoubtable Abbot Kidderminster to fulminate against the act at Paul's Cross. He presented the traditional case of the clergy with intransigence, and the lords, where the 1 A. G. Little, The Grey Friars in Oxford (OHS, xx, 1891), 54. 2 Moorman, Grey Friars, 207; Little, Grey Friars, 265-6. 3 For Brinkley, v. Moorman, Grey Friars, 155-6, and index, s.v.; Little, Grey Friars, 283. 4 V. DNB; Moorman, Grey Friars, 211; Little, Grey Friars, 271—4. 5 For Kidderminster, v. infra, p. 94. 6 The story is told at length in all histories of the period (e.g. Pickthorn, Fisher, Pollard, Hughes) and in biographies of Henry VIII and Wolsey.

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THE TUDOR SCENE

spiritualty were in a majority, dropped the statute and a month later refused to pass a bill sent up from the commons renewing it. Meanwhile, the lower house had appealed to the king, and a committee of royal divines and canonists was set up to debate the issue at Blackfriars with counsel appointed by the clergy. It was at this meeting that Standish, warden of the Grey Friars, defended the Act of 1512 as making for the common weal and therefore not injuring the liberty of the Church; papal legislation in the past, recently (1514) reiterated by Leo X, had never, so he alleged, been received in England. In consequence, the commons demanded that the bishops should order Kidderminster to make a public recantation. So far from doing this, they reaffirmed their agreement with his position as correct and traditional. Meanwhile, during a parliamentary recess, Standish developed his position in a series of public lectures, whereupon the bishops summoned him before Convocation in November 1515, and demanded an answer to a series of crucial questions on the relations of Church and State. Standish, without answering, appealed to the king, and the whole question was twice debated in assemblies summoned by Henry in which counsel and commons and divines were represented at Blackfriars and Baynard's Castle. The whole affair, when it seemed about to develop into a dangerous crisis1 in which the clergy would have been caught by a praemnnirey was compromised. The clergy made what was in practice submission to the king; the offending statute was not re-enacted; Wolsey took steps to ensure that awkward incidents should not occur; and Standish, the 'minister and fomenter of all the trouble', was maintained in favour by the king and in 1518, against the will of Wolsey, promoted to the see of St Asaph's. Meanwhile, the fourteen years of Wolsey's 4 personal rule' had begun, and the conflict was adjourned. It has an interest for the historian as being the last occasion when a monk and a friar stood forward as recognized spokesmen on a living issue of religious policy and theory, and it is noteworthy that each filled his historical role: the monk as the high churchman defending privilege, the friar as the advocate of the anti-clerical, anti-papal party. For the rest, Standish was no reformer. He had come out against Erasmus in the storm that arose over the Greek New Testament of 1516, and had thus qualified himself for a place in the great humanist's gallery of obscurantists; his promotion as 'Saint Asse' in 1518 was a gift of the gods which Erasmus duly exploited.2 Standish was likewise one of Wolsey's examiners of heretics, and as such one of those who tried * little Bilney' in 1527. He was chief counsel for Queen Katharine, though not in fact very ardent in her support, and he joined with Stokesley and Longland in an endeavour to tone down the declaration of submission of the 1 Lords Journals, I, 57; LP, II, 1313-14. 2 Erasmus has many hard words for Standish, e.g. ep. 1126 (Allen, iv, 310): 'Habet [ed. Lee]... Standicium multis titulis insignem, primum Minoritam, deinde theologum, postremo episcopum.' V. ep. 608; Allen, in, 21; and the letter of More, ep. 481; 11, 371-2.

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clergy in 1532. On the other hand, he accepted the royal supremacy without demur. He was, in fact, a conservative of the type of Stokesley and Tunstall, and his death in 1535 relieved him of further choice between opposition to heresy and compromise with it. Standish was the last distinguished friar of his generation. He had grown to maturity before the new theological learning had begun to trouble academic waters. The friars who were at their studies when he had become bishop were of another vintage. From 15 20 onwards the opinions and writings of Luther were being diffused at Cambridge by a group of exceptionally gifted young men who were to be the leaders of opinion ten and fifteen years later and who were almost all, in one way or another, to suffer for their opinions.1 Why Cambridge and not Oxford was the centre of the new theology is not at first sight clear. In part, it may have been that Lutheran teaching filtered into England through the ports of East Anglia and the fenland; in part because the dwellers in East Anglia, whence came a large proportion of the students at Cambridge, were more ready to absorb the new teaching than were the men of western England; in part, finally, much may have hung upon a few dominant personalities. In any case, the seeds of Lutheranism took root in Cambridge, and an informal society discussed its consequences; their meeting-place, the White Horse tavern, passed into legend as the cradle of one, at least, of the schools of English Reform; it was known to contemporaries as * Germany', and the men who met there as 'Germans'. To many of the young friars of the day the sudden impact of revolutionary doctrine which held forth a promise of spiritual refreshment to such men as Latimer and Bilney, and of freedom from numberless traditional inhibitions to those of the stamp of Coverdale or Bale, must have been both intoxicating and unsettling. Luther's three great pamphlets, attacking the papacy, undermining the whole system of the monastic and devoted life, and sweeping away its characteristic observances and prohibitions in the names of Christian liberty, of the word of Scripture, and of early Christian practice2—all this, before the forces of Catholicism had rallied, must have been a flood hard for individuals to stem, and it inevitably affected the friars more than the monks. The latter had lived almost all their lives in their age-old home, with the traditions of a family apart from the rest of the world, and few of them had any intellectual interests or love of religious dialectic. The friars, on the other hand, were in the world; their business was to preach and to argue; they had been, or were still being, brought up to a technique of speculation and dialectic that was outmoded, arid, and in many of its manifestations positively destructive of deep spirituality. To such men the new evangel from Germany and 1 The personalities and activities of this group have often been described; among the more recent and sympathetic pictures may be mentioned that by E. G. Rupp, Studies in the

making of the English Protestant tradition, 15—46. 2 De captivitate babylonica ecclesiae (1520); de libertate hominis christiani (1520); de votis monasticis (1521).

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THE TUDOR SCENE

Switzerland must have seemed at once as compelling and as dissolvent as Darwinism seemed to many a century ago or as Marxism appeared to many in the generation between the two European wars, while to simpler minds that lacked strong conviction or wise guidance it must have seemed at once as liberating and as dynamic as did the first call of John Wesley. The friars of early Tudor England were not, like their predecessors in the age ofAquinas, or their successors of to-day, the spearhead of orthodox theology, strong and confident in their possession of the truth and of means of defending it. They were rather a part of the world of their age, using outworn tools and lacking any sense of apostolic vocation or intellectual security. Most of the leading spirits of the revolutionary group at Cambridge were from the colleges, and so secular clerics; such were Cranmer, Latimer and others. Of the friars who were of the party the ablest was the Austin friar Robert Barnes.1 Barnes was a Norfolk man from Lynn. He had taken the habit of the Austin friars as a boy, and was sent for part of his studies to Louvain, at that time entering upon the most distinguished period of its history and a noted centre of academic humanism. Barnes absorbed the Latin classics, and returned to lecture on them to a group of his confreres which included Miles Coverdale. He does not seem at this time to have had leanings towards the new opinions; he owed his new orientation, like Latimer, to Bilney but, unlike Latimer, he does not appear as the earnest prophet of reform; rather, he had many of the mental and social characteristics of the typical friar of the earlier satirists. As Gardiner, who knew him well over a long period of years, put it, he was ' a trim minion friar Augustine, one of a merry scoffing wit, friarlike, and as a good fellow in company was beloved of many'. 2 He attained notoriety, and began the series of his tribulations, with a sermon on Christmas Eve in 1525 in which he deprecated the worldly observance of festivals, criticized traditional religion on a number of counts, and passed on to expatiate upon the ostentatious splendours of Wolsey. His subsequent career falls outside the limits of this volume. After a long and not unfriendly examination, he recanted his expressed opinions under protest, but ultimately fled abroad, where he wrote as a convinced reformer and was ultimately used by Cromwell and the king to sound the German theologians in the matter of the divorce, and again in 1539 as an ambassador to Denmark and one of those charged with the negotiations for the marriage with Anne of Cleves. Finally, having returned to England, he insisted on parading his Lutheran opinions and was ultimately, in 1540, one of the group of six executed at Tyburn, three for Lutheran heresy and three for denying the king's supremacy in matters of religion. 1 For Barnes, v. DNB, and Rupp, op. cit. 31-46. 7. Gardiner gives a long and interesting account of his relations with Barnes in a letter to George Joye printed in J. A. Muller, The Letters of Stephen Gardiner, letter 81, pp. 164-78. The quotation in the text is on p. 165. Elsewhere (p. 334) he has a reference to Bale: *ineptientis fraterculi latratus.. .frater Baal'.

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Barnes had as his pupil in the classics at the Austin friary, and as his companion in the meetings at the White Horse, his confrere Miles Coverdale,1 a man of greater mental gifts and of a less volatile temperament. He was a northerner, and the parts of Lutheran teaching that most attracted him were those that most resembled the tenets of Wyclif and the Lollards: zeal for the word of Scripture, hatred of images, and a disbelief in the value of a monastic or vowed religious life. He was in fact one of the earliest and most consistent 'puritans' of the first generation of reformers. He assisted Barnes in his trial for heresy before Wolsey and Tunstall in 1526, and then abandoned his habit and his vows and went abroad, where for twenty years he was active as a translator and controversialist. He returned in due course to be bishop of Exeter and a consistent upholder of what developed into puritanism. Yet a third friar of great ability and unusual versatility of talent was at Cambridge with Barnes and Coverdale. This was the young Carmelite John Bale, destined to stormy career and many changes of fortune.2 Bale, as he never ceased to proclaim, was a Suffolk man, and was born at Cove, near Dunwich, in 1495. He was entered by his parents at the Carmelite house at Norwich when he was twelve, and in due course was sent to Cambridge in 1514, where, unlike his contemporaries in die other three orders, he did not reside in the priory with his confreres, but became a member of the newly founded Jesus College. From Cambridge he passed to Lou vain and Toulouse, where he is found in 1527; he returned to take his B.D. at Cambridge in 1529 and then passed immediately to be prior of the Carmelite houses of Maiden, Doncaster (c. 1530) and Ipswich (1533). It was probably in Suffolk that he attracted the notice and patronage of Thomas, Lord Wentworth, one of the earliest men of position to take up with Lutheranism, and Wentworth was probably responsible for the final 'conversion' which led Bale to leave his order, marry and accept employment as a curate at Thorndon (Essex), though as early as 1531 at Doncaster he had taught one of his subjects that Christ was not really present in the Sacrament. As he tells us himself that he was a Carmelite for twentyfour years, his final break with the past must have taken place £.1531. In that year he was in trouble with Stokesley, and in 1534 with Lee, the archbishop of York. Finally, he was accused of a string of quasi-heretical opinions (among which his extreme anti-papal bias was not reckoned) before Stokesley, but an old friendship with Cromwell, to whom John Leland also wrote as advocate, saved him, and during 1538-40 he appears to have been in charge of a group of strolling players under Cromwell's patronage, writing topical 'moralities' as anti-papal and anti-monastic 1 The literature on Coverdale is very extensive. For his life, v. DNB. 2 All previous accounts of Bale have been antiquated by two recent monographs by two scholars working independently though simultaneously; cf. John Bale, dramatist and antiquary, by Honor McCusker, and John Bale, a study in the minor literature of the Reformation, by Jesse W. Harris.

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THE TUDOR SCENE

propaganda. From 1540 to 1548 he was in exile in Germany, whence he returned to receive the Irish bishopric of Ossory from the hands of Edward VI. With his further career we are not concerned. Bale is not an amiable character. His controversial writings touch depths of scurrility and obscenity remarkable even for that age, and the epithet * bilious' often attached to his name, though owing much of its vogue to its alliterative quality, is not altogether undeserved. Yet at the same time Bale has to his credit work of permanent historical value, and his very real industry and learning, coupled with his devotion to the memory of the past worthies of England, especially of his own order, have helped to temper the resentment which his bitter pen has provoked. Bale had a real sense of the value and interest of the past,1 and a part of him, at least, had kinship with Leland and Abbot Foche of St Augustine's. As a young Carmelite and again presumably when prior in East Anglia, he had occupied himself in amassing facts about the history and ancient lights of his order.2 He preserved with piety the collected notes of Leland, and himself published a bibliography of British writers which has ever since been a starting point for all who have attempted a similar task. Without Bale, Fuller, Pitts, Wood and Tanner would scarcely have known where to begin. He was, moreover, extremely learned in all matters concerning the English past, and even his excursions into ancient ecclesiastical history, though full of partisan acerbity and fantastic conclusions, are the work of a scholar who, in a more peaceful age, might have achieved something of solid utility. The notable example of Thomas Hearne and other antiquaries has shown that a certain type of scholarly industry and accuracy, together with a just appreciation of men long dead, is by no means inconsistent with a narrowness of mind and a bitter spirit of jealousy and intolerance towards the living. This is not to say that, on the balance, the good qualities of Bale's work outweigh the bad, still less, that his works of learning can in any way offset faults of character and lack of spiritual qualities. Yet devotion to any pursuit which is not purely selfish or mercenary has something in it that attracts sympathy, and Bale's application to his studies, even in advanced years, received quaint recognition from one of his own way of thinking: Good aged Bale, that with thy hoary heares, Dost yet persiste to turne the paynefull Booke; O happye man, that has obtayned such yeares, And leavst not yet, on papers pale to looke.3 1 Cf. the passage in his Summarium, £o. 3, Q. 3, cited McCusker, John Bale, 123: 'Utque causam suscepti in hoc volumine laboris explicem, ad id me imprimis coegerunt historiarum dulcedo, literarum cupiditas, atque vehementer naturalis et officiosus erga patriam amor.' 2 He had, for example, compiled lists of the generals and English provincials, which drew from Fr B. Zimmermann, in Monumenta Historica Carmelitana, 1, 264 n., the remark: 'qui nonobstante haeresi et apostasia de re historica Ordinis nostri optime meritus est\ 3 Barnabe Googe, Eclogs, Epytaphes and Sonettes (London, 1563), fo. E 6, cited by H. McCusker, John Bale, 128.

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Besides these three notable figures, several other friars were on the edge of the great world, or were suspected of addiction to novelties, in the early decades of the century. Among the Franciscans of Oxford Nicholas de Burgo, a native of Florence and graduate of Paris, incorporated at Oxford in 1522/3, collaborated in 1530 with Stokesley and Foxe in writing a book on the king's marriage in favour of the divorce, and was probably used as negotiator with the university of Bologna in the same affair.1 A colleague, Thomas Kirkham, opposed the divorce, but later became a Protestant. At Cambridge, Friar Stephen Baron, who became an Observant and provincial minister, was confessor to Henry VIII as a young man, and a noted preacher. He wrote a book of instruction for kings, De officio et caritate Principumy which he dedicated to Henry.2 Gregory Bassett, on the other hand, who was at Cambridge from 1522 onwards, was suspected of heresy and imprisoned but later released. Whatever his views at that time, he ended as a conservative, and is noted in 1561 as a 'common mass-sayer'.3 Another to incur suspicion was William Call, a Norfolk man and a Paston on his mother's side. In early life he was 'somewhat reclaimed to the Gospel's side' by Bilney, but as ten years later he was provincial the extent of his reclamation must remain uncertain.4 More pronounced in his views was John Cardmaker, an Oxford graduate who spent some years at Cambridge. He was an active reformer, married, and ended in the fires of Smithneld in 1555.5 A like fate probably overtook William Roy, an Observant of Greenwich, who spent some time at Cambridge and when there copied the Montfort Codex of the Greek New Testament at the instigation of Henry Standish, to help him in his controversy with Erasmus. Roy soon became unorthodox, and before 1524 fled to join Tyndale at Hamburg. He wrote a well-known satire on Wolsey, Rede me and be nothe wrot/ie, and a treatise against the seven sacraments, and was probably burnt as a heretic in Portugal in 1531.6 Another friar who studied at both universities, Bartholomew Traheron, joined the reformers and went abroad, married, and returned to be keeper of the King's Library at Westminster, Member of Parliament and in time dean of Chichester.7 Similar careers can be seen at other friaries. John Joseph of Canterbury became one of Cranmer's chaplains and a zealous reformer. George Browne, of the Oxford Austin friars, and later prior of the London house, was on terms of friendship with his London neighbour, Thomas Cromwell, and may have been the priest who assisted at the secret form of marriage between Henry and Anne Boleyn in 1533. He was appointed as one of the visitors of the friars in 1534, and was rewarded for his pains by a doctorate in divinity at Oxford and the archbishopric of Dublin.8 1 3 5 7 8

Little, Grey Friars, 280-2. 2 Moorman, Grey Friars, 151. Ibid. 151—2. 4 Ibid. 160. Ibid. 161, and DNB. 6 Moorman, op. cit. 205. Ibid. 217. DNB, and A. G. Little in VCH, Oxon, 11 (1907), 147.

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THE TUDOR SCENE

From these brief notes it will be seen that for some fifteen years before the first clear indications of a general suppression of the religious orders, the friars had been exposed to currents of heterodox teaching, and had lost several of their number to the camp of the reformers. Doubtless the impact of the new theology was greatest at Cambridge, Oxford and perhaps London. The numbers known to have defected are few indeed from out of a body of nearly three thousand, and even if we allow for many nameless apostates the proportion is still small. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that several of those who left their habit were men of unusual ability, and the effect upon others, not only of their defection, but of their opinions in the years before they went, and of the influences of all kinds that led to their going, must have been considerable. The friars, who in the days of Wyclif had showed themselves as a solid phalanx in the cause of orthodoxy, had been, to some extent at least, shaken and divided for some years before the end came. They were not, as a body, a bulwark of traditional Catholic teaching on the higher level in 1520-35 as they had been in 1370 and onwards. Very little is known of the state of discipline among the friars in the decades immediately preceding the Dissolution. A rare, if not unique, piece of record evidence is found in a letter from the general of the Austin hermits, Gabriel of Venice, a convert Jew, to William Wetherall, the provincial of England, in the year 1527. This letter,1 written by the superior who had had the task of containing the eruption of Luther and his first followers, gives a dismal picture of the friary at Canterbury. Sad stories had reached Rome: communal life and regular discipline is nonexistent; many of the friars eat and sleep in the city taverns and play at dice, cards and ball games in public; their morals are correspondingly lax. The provincial is ordered to restore order and to remove the ringleaders, Prior Roos and Friars John Parker and George Brum, from Canterbury. Should he fail in his duty, the general himself will consider sending visitors to the province. A note is appended to the letter giving permission to Friar John Toune to return to England. Toune was a Canterbury man, and it is natural to suppose that the general's impression of the friary was derived from him. If so, it is well to remember that two years previously Friar John, along with the then prior and others, had armed themselves with sticks and other weapons, and had prevented the coroner from arresting one who had taken refuge in the friary church.2 As for George Brum, this can scarcely be other than Dr George Browne, who ten years 1 I owe this letter to the kindness of Fr B. Hackett, O.S.A., who procured a copy for me from the Archive of the Generalate of his Order in Rome, where the letter is in Regestrum Dd 15, fos. i26v— i27v. It is dated from Padua, September 1527. 2 Canterbury City Archives MS. Bunce, fos. 99 r~v. For this MS. see HMCy report 9, app. i, 176 a. I owe this reference, through Fr Hackett, to Fr Francis Roth, O.S.A. Fr Hackett points out that the charges against the London friar in LP> vn, 617, no. 1670, bear a striking resemblance to those in the above letter, and suggests that George Browne supplied Cromwell with a copy to use as common form.

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6l

later was to be appointed by the king general of all the friars in England. Too much weight must not be put upon this letter, a hearsay account of things depending upon the word of an undisciplined friar; it may, however, at least suggest that the restlessness of so many of the Austin hermits was a reflection of the prevailing lack of discipline and decorum in their houses. By contrast, the steadfastness of John Stone at Canterburybecomes still more remarkable.1 I For Stone's refusal to admit the royal supremacy, v. infra, p. 364.

CHAPTER VI

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY VISITATIONS I. THE LINCOLN VISITATIONS

Seventy years ago, the apologist of the Tudor monks appealed to the records as evidence of the regularity of monastic life immediately before the Dissolution.1 At the time, few of the relevant documents were in print but nearly all have subsequently appeared. On the whole, they have proved less favourable in their verdict than Gasquet hoped, but they have also proved more difficult to interpret than he imagined. Some of their limitations as evidence have been noted elsewhere,2 and these must always be borne in mind. Nevertheless, they remain important evidence. In the chapters that follow, we shall review the records of the bishops of Lincoln, next those of the bishops of Norwich, and finally the shorter and more varied records of other bishops and of some of the orders concerned. The vast medieval diocese of Lincoln stretched from the Humber to the Thames, and from the slopes of the Cotswolds to the edge of the Fenland. Besides Lincolnshire, the second largest county of England, it included the shires of Leicester, Northampton, Rutland, Oxford, Buckingham, Bedford, and a large part of Hertford. Though somewhat smaller in area than the diocese of York, it was more unwieldy for an administrator, for much of the northern diocese was barren moor, and some outlying districts were in practice all but ignored by the ordinary, while for what remained York was far more conveniently situated as a strategic centre than was Lincoln, even if the archbishop of York never resided in the city itself. Moreover, the diocese of Lincoln was far more populous, and churches and religious houses were scattered over all the area save for a few inconsiderable tracts of forest. As regards religious houses, the diocese of Lincoln probably contained more than did York or any other diocese, but an unusually large proportion belonged to exempt orders. Cistercians and Premonstratensians had a fair number of abbeys within its ambit, and about three-quarters of the religious of the Gilbertine family, which had its origin and head house in Lincolnshire, dwelt in Lincoln territory. The houses of the black monks and black canons were numerous, but counted among their numbers relatively few abbeys or priories of the first rank: Peterborough, Ramsey and Croyland among the monks, Leicester, Oseney and Dunstable among the canons were the chief. Small and medium-sized houses, however, abounded and were evenly distributed, and we have records in the early sixteenth century of visitations of some forty-three establishments, a number sufficient to permit of a general judgment on the state of monastic life in the diocese. As i Gasquet, Henry VIII, 10.

z RO, 1, 83-4.

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we also possess comparable records for the same territory a century earlier, we are in a position to see what, if any, changes occurred for better or for worse in the spirit of the religious and their discipline during the period.1 The bishops concerned in the sixteenth century are William Atwater (Nov. 1514-Feb. 1521) and John Longland (May 1521—47), and the visitations are of the periods 1517-20 and 1525-31. Atwater was a man of undistinguished family who had gradually climbed the ladder of preferment from a fellowship at Magdalen to the deanery of Salisbury and thence to Lincoln. Longland, of the same social class, was a more considerable figure.3 Originally a Wykehamist, he also was a fellow of Magdalen and a doctor of divinity; he climbed the ladder steadily, followed Atwater to Salisbury and became confessor and almoner to Henry VIII before he was rewarded with Lincoln. He was, at least in his early years, regarded as a friend and ally by both the humanists and the conservative reformers. He corresponded with Erasmus and expressed high approval of his commentary on the New Testament. He was the friend of Richard Kidderminster, whose compendium of the Rule he circulated among the nuns of his diocese, and to whom he dedicated one of his printed sermons. More, always generous in his appreciations, referred to him as a second Colet on account of his homilectics and the purity of his life.3 Later, as the king's confessor, he was caught up in (if he did not indeed originate) the great controversy of the divorce, in which he stood on the king's side; and he accepted the royal supremacy without much ado. In consequence of this, and of his readiness to implement the act of 1536 suppressing the lesser monasteries, he was one of the objects of attack for the Lincolnshire insurgents. Nevertheless, he remained till the end severely orthodox on all matters unconnected with the supremacy of the king;«he consistently opposed Lutheranism, and approximated very nearly to Gardiner's outlook. He was therefore an alert and conscientious bishop at the time with which we are concerned, with no animus against the religious life as such, though he may have had a tinge of the Erasmian cynicism which had at one time affected even More. Neither Atwater nor Longland conducted all his visitations in person, and Longland in particular deputed much of the work to his vicar-general and chancellor, Dr John Rayne who, only a few years later, was to fall a victim to the fury of the mob at Horncastle.4 1 The sixteenth-century visitations have been published by A. Hamilton Thompson as Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln (abbreviated title Diocesan Visitations) in LRS, 35, 37 (1944, 1947). The first volume of the series (LRS, 33, 1940) contains a long introduction, in the urbane and scholarly style characteristic of the author, which originally formed part of the Birkbeck Lectures delivered at Cambridge in 193.5. For the earlier Lincoln visitations, v. RO, n, 208-12. 2 For Longland, v. DNB, and DVt i, xvii-xix, also the editor's note to Erasmus, ep. 1535 (Allen, vi, p. 1). 3 More's judgment, given in 1519-20 when Longland was dean of Salisbury, is in his letter to a monk (ed. Rogers, ep. 83, p. 192): 'Joannes Longland. . .alter, ut ejus laudes uno verbo complectar, Coletus, ceu concionantem audias, ceu vitae spectes puritatem.' 4 More precisely, on Ancaster Heath. V. LRS, 12, p. 20 n.

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When a case of particular difficulty was imminent, however, Longland himself took command. In order to clarify a mass of detail, it will be best to consider the monks and canons apart. Nine autonomous black monk houses were visited. Bardney, Croyland, Daventry, Eynsham, Humberstone, Peterborough, Ramsey, St Neots and Spalding. Bardney had long been a small and rustic house, without intellectual life or recognizable individuality. In 1519 Atwater found it in a slovenly condition, with hounds padding about the church and cloister and fouling the refectory and chapterhouse, while some of the brethren kept chickens and nesting-boxes in the cloister. Lay folk and women entered unopposed. No serious accusations were made, however, and when in 1530 Dr Rayne visited the place he had nothing to enjoin save the observance of silence. By that date, indeed, a fresh breeze from some quarter had blown into Bardney, for the younger half of the community had taken up with the new and not yet common fashion of taking as a * religious' name that of a saint of ancient times, instead of adding to their Christian name their place of origin.1 Of Croyland there is only one record, that of 1519. Complaints were few and such as might be expected from a reasonably observant house; it is noted that the abbot had engrossed the offices of cellarer and receiver, but otherwise Croyland was going along tolerably well.2 The same, so far as records go, may be said of Daventry, not always prosperous in the past, though there were two cases of apostasy and the monks, as was natural to men on the edge of the shires, were in the habit of taking a pack of harriers with them when out on their customary walk.3 Eynsham, another rural house long fallen from fervour, was in 1517 in a state of torpor. Meat was eaten in the refectory; the porter's two daughters of doubtful reputation were about the place, and there was slackness in choir. An injunction insisted that monks should not learn grammar till they had the psalter by heart, and as no grammar master was available their intellectual attainments must have been limited. Three years later the house was unhappy, with an abbot who rendered no accounts and supported a sister and numerous other relatives on the house. When the visitation was ended, Atwater is recorded as having preached for two hours to the brethren, but the result of his zeal is not known.4 Humberstone, near Grimsby, a small and decayed Tironian house with only three monks, was by now little more than a farm. The abbot accused the brethren of absence from choir, of playing tennis in the village, and even of leaving the monastery altogether from time to time.5 They in their 1 DVy 11, 77-9. 2 Ibid. 108-11. 3 Ibid. 111-13. 4 Ibid. 138-44. 138: 'Ne aliquem ex monachis junioribus gramaticam cantum seu aliud quicquid addiscant quousque psalterium corditenus recordaverint et eciam impnos ac alia officia perfecte sciverint.' 144: 'Habita longa videlicet per spacium ij horarum et amplius saluberima exhortacione/ 5 Ibid. 167-70. 169:' Ludunt ad tennisios in villa de Humberston.* Against this distressing behaviour severe injunctions were issued. But v. supra, p. 51 n. 4.

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turn accused the abbot of withholding their stipends and of making them work in the hayfield for long hours; the share he took in their labours was one more item in the count against him. Peterborough was the largest, though not the richest, abbey in the diocese, with a community of fifty and a large income. Despite these advantages, and intellectual interests evidenced by a regular flow of students to Oxford, Peterborough throughout the fifteenth century had been a house liable to disorder in discipline and finance. It was not a happy house in 1518. The abbot, who had held office for more than twenty years, was Edmund Kirton. He had in hand six of the greater obediences, and the buildings depending upon the offices concerned were in disrepair. He rendered no accounts, and the monks complained that they were neglected both in refectory and infirmary, though they were able in part to find solace in the tavern kept by the house. Though unhappy, the community was nevertheless on the whole respectable, save for the sacrist, who was notoriously incontinent. Abbot Kirton, though he may have neglected his monks, did not wholly waste his considerable income. The beautiful fan-vaulted eastern chapel in the present cathedral was his work; he restored the abbot's lodging, now the bishop's house, and founded a grammar school in his native village.1 Ramsey, visited by Atwater four days before Peterborough, was the richest house in the diocese and one of the wealthiest in England. The abbot was John Warboys, elected in 1507 and in office till the Dissolution, which he survived for a number of years. In 1517 the condition of the house was considerably worse than that of Peterborough. The doors remained unlocked at night; the prior was a bad-tempered drunkard, easy with his friends and severe to brutality with others; despite many previous injunctions there was still no grammar-master for the young monks; both dorter and church let in the weather. Numbers had fallen from the statutory fifty to forty; only two or three attended High Mass and only eight or so the night choirs. The seniors, having sent the juniors to office, went off to dice for money, accompanying their gaming with hideous oaths; when they patronized the choir they talked to each other and left the reciting to the juniors. Much of this was doubtless the exaggerated outpouring of sore minds and soured tempers, but the impression given is of a sordid, though not of a morally decadent, house. Injunctions were given and censures duly imposed.2 Thirteen years later Dr Rayne was at Ramsey. Numbers had increased slightly, and though Abbot Warboys was still in charge the general tone of the house had changed for the better. Abbot and prior led off with Omnia bene and the complaints centred round such , in, 76-83. For earlier visitations, v. RO911, 210. For the tavern, v. DV, 111,78: 'Infra monasterium est quedam taberna in qua fratres temporibus indecentibus aliquando nimis mane aliquando nimis sero bibunt.' Closing time was therefore fixed at 7 p.m. (winter) and 8 p.m. (summer). For the grammar school at Kirton-in-Holland, v. p. 79. 2 Ibid. 83-9. For the gambling, p. 88: 'Seniores ludunt ad taceras et aleas et alios similes ludos temporibus nocturnis eciam pro pecuniis, et ibidem habent maxima juramenta per corpus dominicum et alia ejus membra.'

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comparatively trivial matters as the kitchen drain and stray animals in the infirmary garden. There is no reason to suppose a conspiracy of silence, of which the Ramsey community of 1517 would have been quite incapable, and we may suppose that things had taken a turn for the better, as things will among men.1 Of St Neot's little is said. Between 1520 and 1530 the community increased, and at the latter visitation there was a chorus of Omnia bene which may or may not have been strictly justified. Spalding was in fair fettle.2 It would be tedious to review in detail the houses of Austin canons. They were very numerous, some thirty-three in all. Several were minute, with six canons or even less. Of most of these the records say little, whether for good or bad, but there are a few where it is possible to compare two visitations. Thus at Bicester in 1520 the frater was not kept, fleshmeat was always supplied and there was no public reading; likewise both novice-master and grammar-master were wanting. Ten years later some repairs were needed and numbers were still below the establishment, but otherwise all seemed well. In general the common faults were failure to keep the frater and lack of a grammar-master: the latter a very comprehensible failing in a small community with no regular intake of recruits.3 Some larger houses may be examined more closely. Dorchester near Oxford, the ancient seat of the bishopric, had been for more than a century one of the black spots of the religious world. There are only scanty remains of Atwater's visitation of 1517, but in 1529 and 1530 the place was apparently twice visited. In the earlier of these latter years the community of ten was in its chronic state of disorder; we may even suppose that the whole framework of the horarium had broken down, since Longland gave a long and detailed account of the daily routine, as well as injunctions bearing on particular abuses. In 1530 the prior and others were defamed, the doors stood open for all to enter, attendance at choir was scanty and had been neglected altogether, save for three appearances during the year, by one of the canons, who wandered out to fish or hunt, spending weeks at his brother's house, and had four or five times offered to fight the prior. Longland made a show of severity by suspending the abbot, prior and an incontinent canon, and by publishing a set of strict injunctions, but, as usually happened, the sentence on the abbot was immediately remitted, and there is little reason to suppose that the injunctions were observed. The virus was in the soil of Dorchester.* , in, 89-94. 2 Ibid. 94-7 (St Neot's); 97-8 (Spalding). 3 DV, 11, 79-82. 4 Ibid. 115-22. In addition, a long set of Longland's injunctions of 1529 was printed byArchdeacon G. G. Perry in a note, 'Episcopal visitations of the Augustinian Canons of Leicester and Dorchester', in EHR, iv, 304—13. These are discussed by A. H. Thompson in DVy 11 (App. 11), 203-5, where he gives a probable scheme of the order of the documents. For the pugnacious sportsman, Dan Thomas Wytney, v. DV, 11, 117: 'Quottidie vagatur ad venandum, piscandum. . .et est indoctus, verbosus, et nimium jurans ac ter aut quater paratus fuit ad pugnandum cum priore.'

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At Dunstable, on the other hand, there was life in the body still. In 1518 the community numbered only seven and the prior rendered no accounts, but there were no other accusations and the bishop enjoined that the numbers should be increased. In 1530 this had been done; there were now sixteen canons, the prior was efficient and the place flourished.1 Leicester abbey was one of the largest and wealthiest houses of the order, with a community of twenty-five or so. The abbot, Richard Pexall, who was in office in 1518, continued till his enforced resignation in 1533; he was the abbot to whom Wolsey turned for his last haven, and who anointed and buried the cardinal. Pexall in 1518 had engrossed the revenues of cellarer, sub-cellarer, chamberlain and precentor but was otherwise efficient, save in his failure to control the servants, who did little work and kept a pack of hounds for their recreation. Emulating the servants, the boys of the almonry left their lessons to join the hunt. Clearly the example of Abbot Clown, that great hunter, had been of more avail than his precept.2 Longland, at a visitation that has left no record, suspended the abbot from administration, but one of the two administrators was unworthy, and the abbot had forced his way back. When Longland came again shortly before 1528 the house had degenerated since 1518. The abbot rarely officiated in choir, and on the rare occasions when he appeared he brought with him his fool, who caused distraction and laughter among the canons by his sallies and snatches of song.3 The unworthy administrator, Richard Lichfleld the cellarer, was given to lavish entertainment of a mixed company in his checker. Shortly afterwards, in 1528, Rayne visited the abbey. He found that the canons went out early to hunt, often before daybreak, while hounds were ubiquitous in the monastery, leaving traces of their presence. Sick canons and boys were attended by women nurses, and the abbot had not improved his record of churchgoing, though the economic situation had improved. Rayne took the situation seriously and issued a set of injunctions; one of them, straying into several tongues either for the sake of clarity or through lack of a wide vocabulary, forbade the retention of * ultra iii brase de lez greyhoundes et nulli alii canes nisi ii or iii cowple off spanyells pro le haris'.4 1 Ibid. 122—4. For the general contentment cf. the statement of the refectorer, 124: 'Dicit priorem esse nimium utilem monasterio et fratres caritatius {sic) se habere/ 2 Ibid. 183-6, and v. ROy 11, 186. 3 The injunctions of Longland printed by G. G. Perry {art. cit. EHR, iv, 304-13) are connected in some way with this visitation, but, as in the similar case of Dorchester, it is not certain that Thompson has settled the order of affairs correctly. For the fool, who has some affinities with the Fool in King Lear, v. Perry, 306 (Longland is addressing Pexall): 'Quendam stultum ac scurram continue tecum ad confabulandum habuisti et habes, qui antecedit te quotidie quum ad ecclesiam transis [i.e. pass through the cloister] et in choro, cum tu ibidem existis [a rare occurrence to judge from the detecta], se stolide exercet, verbis, derisionibus, cantilenis at alias [sic], canonicis in choro occasionem risus et dissolucionis. . . prebens, etc' He is forbidden to bring him to church. 4 DV, II, 186-95. The greyhounds are on p. 195. The complaint against the ubiquitous hounds (p. 189) is immediately followed by a request by the same canon for the liturgical observation of the feast of the Holy Name, for which v. also DV, 11, 137.

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Of Missenden, in south Buckinghamshire, records of three visitations remain, perhaps unfortunately for the reputation of the house. At the first in 1518 nothing very serious came to light; there were only five priests and the abbot was ordered to increase their number. In 1530 a new abbot had indeed multiplied his people, but had not thereby magnified joy. There were, besides himself, eight priests and five novices. The buildings were in disrepair, the discipline of the refectory was not observed, and the whole place was dominated by John Compton, the lay steward. Worse still, one of the canons was guilty of unnatural vice with the steward's son, one of the singing children. The culprit, who had had a previous conviction, was gated but apparently suffered no further punishment. Eight months later Longland himself appeared at Missenden on a special visitation arising out of new information. The abbot and a canon had been guilty of repeated misconduct with the wife of a villager, and the abbot's niece, whose mother was employed in the abbey brewery, had no good name.1 When Longland delivered his injunctions, they were in the vernacular, in order that they might be understood. John Compton was to be dismissed, the guilty canon imprisoned, and a properly audited account to be presented by the abbot, who was to be overseen by two of the most discreet canons. A master was to look after the children, and a grammarmaster to instruct the canons, who were to study this subject or practise writing, painting or carving daily.2 At St Frideswide's, Oxford, in 1517 all that is noted is one case of chronic insubordination and the lack of a grammar-master, but in 1520 there are other complaints. Six of the canons are out on Oxfordshire parishes, the prior has taken all offices into his hand and renders no accounts; he is accused of harshness and high-handed conduct. Four years later he handed the house over to Wolsey and became abbot of Oseney.3 Thornton, an important house near the Humber, well known to students of medieval architecture for its magnificent gatehouse and the remains of an octagonal chapterhouse, seems to have been in a flourishing condition with twenty-six canons under an abbot. Almost all agreed that all was well, and this prosperity may have been the reason why Thornton at the Dissolution was one of the few houses chosen for re-foundation as a college with school attached.4 Finally, at the small abbey of Wellow in 1519 Atwater showed himself unusually expansive. He exhorted the canons to cultivate cleanliness and good manners, and avoid every kind of rusticity, for which they had a bad name; every brother is to have a special altar, which he is to keep clean 1 DV, in, 16-27. 2 Longland's injunctions are not in DVy but were printed along with others by E. Peacock in Archaeologia, XLVII, 49-64. 3 DV, in, 47-50. 4 Ibid. 113-15. The notary, tiring of the repeated omnia bene, began to embellish the theme, e.g. 'Omnia bene assent esse in consciencia sua', 'Dicit singula in cenobio salubriter se habere', etc.

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and neatly apparelled, so that it may be said of each one: 'Lord, I have loved the beauty of thy house/ Every brother is to occupy himself with books and sound learning; everyone is to have a supply of paper and a pen. The bishop urges charity between the canons and their tenants and neighbours so that all contention, which is of the devil, may be avoided.1 These injunctions are in their warmth of tone and spiritual appeal unlike any others in the collection, though this was by no means Atwater's first experience of visiting. Six years later the place was still prospering. Among the canons now was Robert Whitgift, uncle of the future archbishop of Canterbury; he succeeded to the abbacy in 1526 and remained in office to the end. Looking back over the records of all these visitations, including many not specifically mentioned, certain faults are seen to be so common as to be endemic, over and beyond what may be called purely moral failings great and small. Superiors rarely gave the canonical annual audited account, and in the case of smaller houses rarely kept any accounts at all; regular instruction in the 'primitive sciences' (i.e. Latin grammar) was rarely available for the younger monks; the refectory was not regularly kept, in the sense that the religious habitually took their meals either in the misericord or with the abbot or in the frater with 'irregular' food; the religious, after a ceremonial retirement after compline, came down again and sat talking and drinking and (at the slacker houses) gaming; finally, the doors of the enclosure were left open, allowing even women ingress to the house to perform services such as nursing, washing and brewing for the religious. None of these faults was new; instances of all occur in the very first visitations of which there is a complete record. It would be a mistake to treat them too dramatically, just as it would be a mistake to compile statistics; it is of the nature of this evidence that it gives no crisp data, and before judging severely we should make an effort to reconstruct the social conditions in the early Tudor countryside, when an abbey, deep in the fields or woods, with most of its inhabitants drawn from the surrounding hamlets, gradually let slip the formalities of canon law. There are, however, two respects in which old failings have become more insidious with the passage of years: they have become so common and so habitual that they are regarded as customs rather than as breaches of the law; and, when they result in moral faults, there is little or no attempt to punish them in any serious way. Apart from the matter of faults and their punishment, two general conclusions on the state of the religious orders seem to emerge from the Lincoln records, and they are of the greater interest as running counter to generally received opinions. The one is that financial embarrassment or economic distress was not a common feature in religious houses of the age. Though there are several cases of inefficiency and waste and dilapidation, I Ibid. 116—20.

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there is not a single instance in these Lincoln visitations of a house faced with ruin or decay on this score. The other concerns numbers. It has been noted summarily elsewhere1 that no serious decline in the numbers of the religious is noticeable before the days of real uncertainty began from theearly months of 1534. The Lincoln figures show that very little overall change had taken place between the days of Alnwick and those of Longland. If some communities had shrunk, others had swollen; indeed, if full statistics were available, we should probably find a slight aggregate rise. More significantly still, numbers often rose between the visits of Atwater and those of Longland. Thus Dunstable rose from seven in 1518 to sixteen in 1530; Chacombe from six (1520) to eight (1530), Missenden from five (1518) to fourteen (1530), St Neot's from ten (1520) to fourteen (1530), Wellow from eight (1519) to ten (1525), and there are no cases of spectacular decline. Moreover, at Dunstable and Missenden the earlier visitor had enjoined an increase, and it had been forthcoming. The inference is that recruits came, so to say, in response to advertisement; what the quality of such recruits was is another matter. Long before the date at which we have arrived, it would seem clear that in the majority of the houses almost all the recruits were local, and that they were adopting a way of life that promised a livelihood, rather than following a spiritual vocation. In view of the paucity of information concerning the Cistercians, particular interest attaches to the notices we possess of two houses in the same district of England and during Longland's episcopate, even if the picture is an unattractive one. We must not forget that only exceptionable irregularity would set in motion the kind of unusual process that would leave record. The abbeys concerned are Thame, an Oxfordshire house near the Buckinghamshire border, and Bruerne, on the edge of the Cotswolds in the same county. The bishops of Lincoln, owing to events in the twelfth century, ranked as founders and patrons of Thame, and in 1526 Longland learnt that the abbey was in a bad way. Canonically incapable of * visiting* it, he appears to have adopted the course of going to the abbey and receiving depositions, which he forwarded to the abbot of Waverley, the mother-house, who proceeded to visit it himself. The articles3 were chiefly concerned with the abbot: he was accused of expensive living, of dilapidation of the property of the house, and of allowing a favourite servant, one John Cowper, to obtain control of the establishment and to batten upon it. Furthermore, he was accused of dangerous intimacy with a boy, Cowper's son, and of excessive familiarity with other boys and youths boarding in 1 RO, II, 257 seqq. 2 The Thame dossier was printed by G. G. Perry in EHR, in, 704-22. He was stimulated to do this by the appeal, already noted, to the episcopal registers as testimonials to monastic virtue by Dom A. Gasquet in Henry VIII (p. 10). It is summarized by A. H. Thompson in DVy n, App. n. The Bruerne document has not been printed but is summarized by Thompson (Joe. cit. 215—18) from a transcript from a Lincoln document made by the Rev. H. E. Salter and communicated by Geoffrey Baskerville.

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the abbey. He allowed his monks to wander abroad, engaging in archery with the villagers and feasting in the local taverns. He kept useless servants, and did not forbid the entrance of women. A monk of the house, apparently a brother of Cowper, was accused of abetting him, of immoral relations with several women, and of promiscuous swearing. The abbot and his monks were totally ignorant of the Rule and monastic ceremonial.1 To these articles the abbot of Thame, who was clearly a man of considerable literary abilities, and enough of a humanist to make the conventional profession of lack of style,2 returned long answers in a tone of suave insolence. So far from having an excessive attachment to John Cowper, he cherished towards him no more than the moderate love of one Christian for another.3 As regards bad companionship, he would be delighted to avoid it for the future.4 As for the relationship with Cowper filsy he admitted the impeachment but for the future would be most careful to avoid it.5 The reports of his feasting were untrue; he and his guests (and would that visitors were not so rare) partook of the coarse food of the poor, so coarse that pilgrims, rich and poor alike, spurned it.6 As for useless dependants, the householder who had none could call himself fortunate indeed, he himself would strain every nerve to get rid of the pest.7 Little John Cowper, if he gives rise to gossip, shall go. Nothing, certainly, could be more detrimental to religious than female society; he will deprive himself and his brethren of it so far as he can honestly do so.8 Slight as may be his literary talent, yet others will witness that he and his community are not so ignorant of the Rule as is alleged. Finally, he will observe all the injunctions most closely, and if he should relapse into the errors of olden days he will remember his plighted word and delay not a moment to retrace his ill-starred steps.9 Dom Chynnor, for his part, had never so much as dallied in imagination with the crimes imputed to him. As for swearing, he hardly ever used a bad word, but it might well be that one slipped out now and again accidentally, as one might say.10 1 Perry, art. cit. 706: 'Tu ignarus es, et fratres nescii ordinis religionis et sanctarum ceremoniarum ejusdem, nee ullus fratrum regulas [sic] Sancti Benedicti scit aut cognoscit.' 2 Ibid. 710: 'qualitercunque peritia Latinitatis rudes sumus*. 3 Ibid. 708: 'Nos. . .ut solemus erga proximos, eum ipsum mediocri quodam amoris et dilectionis vinculo prosecutos profitemur.' 4 Ibid.'. 'Puerorum et juvenum consortia quam hilariter in posterum evitare conabimur.' 5 Ibid.i 'Obnoxios nos confitemur, unde et posthac solerti cura resecabimus.' Cf. 710, 'infantulum Cowper'. 6 Ibid. 709: ' Profitemur nos et convivas cum adfuerint (utinam adessent) vocari. . . magna penuria et grossis cibis epulari ita ut peregrini, superioresque et pares, id fastidiunt.' 7 Ibid. 710: 'Otiosos vero quis non alit? Atqui huic morbo summo conatu obviare studebimus/ 8 Ibid.i 'Mulierum autem frequentiam, quibus religioni nihil perniciosius, a fratibus omnibus et a nobis ipsis quantum decebit summopere destituemus.' 9 Ibid.". 'Si aliquando exfluxuet fragili sensu aut tarda oblivione. . .delabimur, mox. . . pedem retrahere non elongabimus.' 10 Ibid. 711: 'Non sponte, immo incogitantia, inter loquendum nonnunquam decidunt verba non bene sonantia.'

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The men who answered thus to a grave and just charge must have known what kind of person they had to deal with in the abbot of Waverley. Making no attempt to traverse their statements he composed a long resume of the daily duties and behaviour of a good Cistercian, and exhorted the brethren to love their abbot and practise all the virtues inculcated by their Rule. Thus they will proceed not from bad to worse, but from holiness to perfection. St Stephen Harding, yisiting Clairvaux, could scarcely have bettered his phrases. The document is a signal example of the false impression that may be conveyed by an unctuous amplification of platitudes. The whole dossier was forwarded to Longland, who in a long and angry commentary demolished the abbot's defence and castigated the complaisance of the visitor. The abbot (writes Longland) is full of promises for the future, but what about the past? He asks, who is without idle mouths to feed? I reply, any prudent householder. He says he will forbid women so far as he can without discourtesy. When, pray, is it courteous for a cloistered Cistercian to entertain women of easy virtue? He says that pilgrims shun his coarse fare, but it is good enough to attract ladies of the neighbourhood. In short, the bishop concludes, you have allowed a bad abbot, a slack house, and a chaotic economy to escape without censure, and have merely treated the monks to a pious lecture on their time-table. If you fail to act, I as founder will find a way to put things right.1 Whether or not the abbot of Waverley acted we do not know, but within a year the abbot was replaced by Robert King, late abbot of Bruerne and soon to be the first bishop of Oxford. Thame's gain, if gain it was, was Bruerne's loss, for he was succeeded there by another rogue abbot, and the second piece of information mentioned above relates to the misdeeds of Abbot Chascombe. It is an account of a process in 1532, initiated by a royal writ, to enquire into the misdemeanours of the abbot, conducted by the abbots of Woburn and St Mary Graces, the ' general reformers ' of the English houses appointed by the general chapter, and the abbot of Garendon, the official visitor of the house.2 The abbot appeared, but only to deny the competence of the court as consisting simply of royal commissaries; he entered a tuitorial appeal to Rome, sheltering himself under the protection of Canterbury. It was an extraordinary step to take at so late a date. When he had retired the prior and nine monks accused him of simony (he had purchased his election from Wolsey), dilapidation and incontinence. The crimes were notorious and the charges amply substantiated. He failed to appear and was pronounced contumacious, but the end did not come for almost a year when, on 12 March 1533, he was found guilty by the same abbots as before, and deprived of office. No other monk was charged, either by the judges or by the abbot in selfdefence, and it must therefore be assumed that flagrant misbehaviour, at least, was confined to the abbot. 1 Alexander (the Magnificent) of Lincoln had founded Thame in 1137-40. 2 Summarized by Thompson, v. p. 70, n. 2 supra.

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II. THE NORWICH VISITATIONS

The second important collection of episcopal visitation records of the early Tudor period is that of the diocese of Norwich, and comprises Bishop GoldwelPs visitation of 1492-3 and four visitations of Bishop Richard Nykke in 1514, 1520, 1526 and 1532.1 Its value lies in the account it gives of a large group of houses visited at short intervals, thus presenting us with a comprehensive view of the religious life of East Anglia only a few years before the Dissolution. It differs in more than one respect from the contemporary collection of Redman: the houses of men are all Austin canons, save for half a dozen black monk communities and one of Trinitarians, and all, with few exceptions, small families often or less; in contrast to Redman's records the detecta and comperta are in many cases preserved and are sometimes lengthy, whereas the injunctions are very brief and never give an estimate of good and evil such as Redman habitually made; moreover Nykke, at least, was far less concerned than Redman with maintaining or restoring a fixed level of observance, and in many cases the examination was conducted by a suffragan or commissioners of the ordinary. The general impression received differs little from that given by the collection of Alnwick eighty years earlier. Half a dozen of the houses, including the largest monastic establishment of the diocese, are extremely decadent, and there are a number of cases of incontinence. On the other hand, at one or two of the larger, and several of the smaller, houses of canons the visitands answered unanimously that all was well or made but trifling complaints. There is in general no reason to suspect collusion to hide gross faults, and at one or two of the priories (Pentney is perhaps an example though its later history is unsatisfactory) this silence may be taken as evidence of orderly content; in other cases, however, absence of desire to complain implies simply acquiescence in mediocrity. Many of the later visitations, indeed, give every sign of having been conducted with despatch as little more than a mere formality, two houses often being dealt with in a single day.2 The largest community was that of the cathedral priory of Norwich, which in 1492 still contained almost fifty monks. In the fourteenth century it had been distinguished by an enthusiasm for theological study and had produced more than one notable doctor; this enthusiasm had now vanished, and GoldwelPs most peremptory injunction was one regarding the failure to send students to the university; two were to go without delay to Gloucester College.3 No individual scandals were found, but the 1 These were edited by Dr Jessopp for the Camden Society in 1888. The notes and parts of the introduction are inaccurate, and the comments are thrown into a conversational form which fails to make contact with the real state of things as revealed by the documents themselves. 2 E.g. Buckenham and Wymondham, 23 July 1532 (pp. 307-8); Mettingham College and Bungay nunnery, 21 August 1532 (pp. 317-18). 3 Norwich Visitations, 7.

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monastery, as was common with the larger black monk houses, was in many ways slack in discipline. Women were living within the precincts, the choir observance was faulty, and much time was wasted in useless conversations. Twenty years later there had been something of a decline. There was one clear case of incontinence and suspicions in other directions; lay friends and relatives of the monks were being entertained in private rooms; there was a curious accusation of monks dancing in the guesthouse, and the presence of sheep in the cloister garth seems to indicate a slovenly administration.1 Further visitations showed no great change. St Benet's of Holme, by this time an undistinguished and lonely house among the meres, was in all ways mediocre. Wymondham, till recently a dependency of St Albans, was in a worse state. In 1492 it was noted that the Office was ill celebrated, the monks kept neither cloister nor refectory, but hunted and hawked; private ownership was common and the monks traded with their allowances; the abbot had kept no accounts and held no audit for years. There were no particular injunctions at this visitation, but the abbot was banished to the manor of Downham with a substantial dower, and the administration given to one of the monks.2 Twenty years later, the condition of Wymondham had still further deteriorated. The abbot complained that the bolts of the cloister door had been broken by monks whom he had not been able to identify, that the prior and others had broken open a chest and extracted the muniments of the house, and that he himself had been treated contumeliously by the prior's servants. The prior for his part had complaints to make against the abbot, but was clearly himself unbalanced if not insane, and a number of monks deposed to his violent and irresponsible behaviour. It is not surprising that there were accusations of incontinence and that the regular life was neglected.3 Six years later there was a new abbot of some learning from outside; the former abbot and prior had disappeared, though the latter had been replaced by a monk against whom serious accusations had previously been brought. Various complaints of slackness and neglect were made, and the injunctions did little to brace up the discipline. Finally, in 1526 a new abbot from Norwich had apparently succeeded in re-establishing a better order. Perhaps of all the Norwich visitations those which have attracted most attention are those of the Austin priory of Walsingham, where the shrine of Our Lady was, during the half-century before the Reformation, unquestionably both the most frequented and the richest in England, and to which the visits of Erasmus, Henry VIII and Queen Katharine have attracted the notice of historians. It is therefore somewhat surprising to 1 Norwich Visitations, 75: * Dompnus Willelmus Boxwell supprior dicit q u o d . . . in hostiaria solent confratres saltare, favore hostilarii, tempore nocturno usque ad nonam.' Ibid. j6:'Dompnus Johannes Shilton. . .dicit quod. . .oves pascuntur in prato claustri in nocumentum confratrum.' Six years later the same deponent was put to the pains of stating that all was now well in the house save for these same sheep. 2 Ibid. 21—2. 3 Ibid. 96-100.

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find the house in a far from satisfactory condition. In 1494 the complaints concerned comparatively minor matters—the partial behaviour of the prior, and his failure to present accounts. In 1514, however, a truly deplorable condition of things was revealed. The community was ridden by a couple of the prior's servants; the wife of one of these was the prior's mistress, who made free with the victuals of the house; in addition, the prior embezzled money and jewels from the shrine of Our Lady, and treated some of the priory lands as his own possession. Absence of respect and control reacted on the canons; a group were boon companions of the obnoxious servants John Smith and William Marshall, hunting and hawking by day and revelling by night, the rest were idle, unhappy and quarrelsome.1 The bishop ordered the immediate removal of the two servants and set the prior of Westacre as coadjutor to the prior; the precise aim, as also the wisdom, of the latter step is not apparent, as only ten days previously the bishop, in a visitation at Westacre, had found the prior there negligent in giving accounts, heavily in debt, and the patron of a servant who was the exact counterpart, even down to his name and his wife's complaisance, of the more active of the precious pair at Walsingham.2 The latter house, however, did not remain long in its wholly debased condition. Six years later a new prior was endeavouring to reform discipline, and meeting, as was to be expected, with insubordination and dissensions. Six years later again something of an equilibrium had been reached. As has been said, many of the houses of canons of East Anglia, as also the convents of women, were extremely small in numbers and poor in resources. In the majority of these there were no serious scandals apparent, and still less evidence of fervour; the picture they present is not exhilarating, and the complaints show a state of slovenly and sometimes sordid disorder; they are not infrequently naive in their want of any spiritual aims or ideals. At a few only is the impression given of a harmless and contented group of men or women living a regular and devout, if neither zealous nor austere, life.3 III. FROM ALL QUARTERS

Besides the three great collections from Lincoln, Norwich and the Premonstratensians, a considerable number of isolated records have been discovered and published by historians and antiquaries during the past 1 Ibid. 113—23. 2 Ibid. 101—5. 3 Cf. the records of the nunnery of Campsey, where the daughters of a number of notable families such as the Jerninghams, Willoughbys, Winters, Feltons and Bacons are found. At the two earliest visitations no complaints of any sort were put forward, and at the third the only nun to raise her voice was the precentrbc, who deposed that in thirty-five years of religious life she had seen nothing worthy of correction save the dilapidated conditions of the antiphoners in choir. It is pathetic to note that six years later she and her sisters, under an ageing and parsimonious prioress, found it necessary to complain of the putrid meat served to the nuns and of negligence in the kitchen.

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seventy years. They may be divided for our purpose into three groups: the visits of ordinaries and metropolitans between the accession of Henry VII and the legateship of Wolsey; the visitations carried out by the cardinal or his commissaries; and the normal visitations during the last two decades or so before the royal visitation of 1536. There are also a few visitations of the monastic authorities falling within these limits. The diocesan visitations between 1535 and the disappearance of the greater monasteries will best be considered on a later page when the last act of monastic history is under review. The first group is in almost every respect similar to previous records of the fifteenth century. The new dynasty and the new learning had, however, begun to create an atmosphere of criticism and a sense that decay and inefficiency must somehow be dealt with, and some of the bishops, wholly unsympathetic to the monasticism of their day, were beginning to judge their contemporaries with reference to a distant past and to the letter of the Rule. Abroad, and especially in France, reform of the religious orders was in the air. Influenced by French example, or perhaps merely applying to the Church the policy of order and control that he was following in secular government, Henry VII and his chancellor John Morton, archbishop of Canterbury, decided in 1487 upon a fairly widespread visitation. The chief obstacle lay in the exempt orders—the Cistercians, the Premonstratensians and the Cluniacs—and in a few black monk houses, similarly exempt. Accordingly a bull was obtained from Innocent VIII, Quanta in Dei ecclesia (13 August 1487) giving him full powers to visit all save the Cistercians.1 It is usual to regard this as a measure of religious reform, but it may well have been at root an administrative measure, characteristic of the age, directed towards the centralization of power within a kingdom and proving also, from the point of view of the papacy, to be a fatal measure of devolution of authority. So far as is known, Morton's only attempt to implement these powers at the moment was in relation to the Cluniac priory of Northampton, and to the abbey of St Albans. The priory of St Andrew at Northampton was a fairly large house of some twenty-five monks. It must have had spacious buildings, for as early as the thirteenth century it was occasionally the rendezvous of the triennial chapter of the black monks of the Canterbury province and, after the union of the northern and southern chapters in 1336, it was the invariable meeting-place until the end of the fifteenth century. It was presumably chosen for its central situation, though itself outside the jurisdiction of the chapter; the official chest of archives was kept there, and the meetings were held in the Lady Chapel of the priory church. The affairs of the priory had in 1487 for more than fifteen years been appearing and reappearing in chancery; they are an interesting example of the trouble that could be caused by a senseless and i The bull Quanta, as reissued in 1490, is in Wilkins, Concilia, m, 630.

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1

gratuitous intrigue. About 1470 the prior of La Charite-sur-Loire made a sudden attempt to regain the control of Bermondsey, Wenlock and Northampton that had been lost by his house almost a century earlier. He found an instrument in a restless and unscrupulous monk, a Welshman, William of Brecknock, a professed monk of St James's. Brecknock was duly appointed in 1473 vicar-general of the prior of La Charite in England, and he succeeded in getting his powers recognized in the royal chancery and at Bermondsey. When a vacancy occurred at Northampton he was collated by the prior of La Charite to the post of prior. The monks, however, had elected Thomas Sudbury,2 a monk of Bermondsey, who held his ground for almost eight years until Brecknock succeeded in getting the royal approval to his own appointment. He consoled his rival with the priorate of Wenlock (1482), but Sudbury after a while felt a desire to return to Northampton, and in 1485 secured letters patent from Henry VII empowering him to take possession. Six months later, however, Breckknock obtained from the chancery confirmation of his own previous appointment, and endeavoured to implement this. Meanwhile, the feuds and expenses of the two rivals had reduced the priory to a state of chaos and bankruptcy, and early in 1487 Archbishop Morton decided to step in. His early attempts were unsuccessful, and even when his hands were strengthened by the papal bull it was not till 1491 that he secured the resignation of both pretenders and the election of a new prior. The affair of St Albans, which came to a head in 1489, though earning less notoriety at the time, has in the recent past been treated by a series of writers from Froude to Coulton as a kind of test case for the condemnation of English medieval monasticism.3 Abbot Wallingford's term of office, though marked by a series of successful manoeuvres that increased the influence and wealth of the abbey, and by numerous additions to its possessions and fabric,4 had also its darker side. There were rumours of scandals and embezzlements in the community, and the abbot himself had several times been brought into chancery, not without cause, on charges of dishonesty and violent dealings, both with tenants of the abbey and with the nunneries under his control. It was presumably with a view of obtaining immunity for the future that Wallingford attempted in 1487 to secure complete autonomy for the courts Christian of the abbey and 1 The best account of this affair is by R. Graham,' The English Province of the Order of Cluny in the Fifteenth Century', in EES, 82-7. 2 By a tiresome coincidence a Thomas Sudbury, monk of St Albans, figures in the documents of the St Albans case; Coulton {Five Centuries of Religion, IV, 521 et al.) vexatiously conflates the two men. 3 For the modern controversy, v. Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, I, 401-42; J. Gairdner, Lollardy and the Reformation, I, 269—72; in, xxx—xxxiii; F.A. Gasquet, Abbot Wallingford', G. G. Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, iv, 508—59. For a full discussion with a review of previous literature, v. M. D. Knowles, 'The Case of St Albans in 1490', in JEH, in, 144—58. On p. 155 therein (notes 1, 3, 4) for 160 read 151. 4 These are set out in the notice of his works in Reg. J. Whethamstede, 1, App. (D). V. supra, p. 9.

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episcopal orders for himself;1 these requests, if granted, would have rounded off the ancient immunities of St Albans by making the abbey and its territory completely independent of any control short of the Roman Curia: that is, of any control whatsoever. Wallingford's procurators were in Rome in the spring of 1487; at the very same moment, Morton's were there to demand extensive powers of visitation; while the abbot's men returned empty-handed, the archbishop secured the issue of the bull Quanta in Dei ecclesia. This, however, he did not at once use against St Albans; possibly he was thwarted by appeals of which no record has survived; but in 1489 the king appealed earnestly to the pope to strengthen the hands of his archbishop. Wallingford may have got wind of this, for he approached the Curia again, and was successful in obtaining a brief to Morton bidding him protect the privileges of the abbey. It should be mentioned that the pope of the day was Innocent VIII, under whose slack hands the Roman Curia increased its reputation for venality and rapacity. With two such rich prelates bidding for support the tactic of the officials throughout was to issue favourable responses to both parties simultaneously. Thus exactly a month after the brief to Morton the pope reissued in his favour the bull Quanta, and on its receipt the archbishop conveyed to Wallingford a personal warning of his intention to set St Albans to rights. Wallingford countered by appealing to the pope in virtue of the special privilege enjoyed by his house which exempted it from all visitation save by a legate a latere commissioned for that precise purpose. Without waiting for the issue of this appeal Morton on 5 July despatched to the abbot the monition which has given occasion to so much impassioned writing. It is certainly an arresting document.2 The abbot is accused of simony, usury and dilapidation; of alienating the abbey's property; of failure to maintain discipline and to punish monks guilty of sin with loose women and with nuns; of making arbitrary and unworthy appointments in the nunneries; of allowing monks to resort thither for immoral purposes; and of allowing them to rob the shrine of St Albans in order to buy promotion. We are left at first reading with the impression that the abbey had reached the lowest depths of degradation. That abbot and community were other than they had been under Thomas de la Mare may be readily allowed. Wallingford seems to have been an adroit, unscrupulous, ambitious opportunist,3 able, clear-sighted and free from gross vice; but his methods in defending and advancing his own interest and those of his abbey had often been questionable, and it is likely that he avoided trouble with his monks by making no attempt to better their discipline. In a large abbey, under such an abbot, there were 1 Reg. J. lVhethamstede, n, 287—9; c ^ Knowles, art. cit. 153, n. 3. 2 Printed by Wilkins, Concilia, III, 630-2, and thence in Monasticon, 11, 295-6. 3 The writer (PWhethamstede himself) of the Register four times uses the terms politicus, poliuce, of Wallingford {Reg. J. Whethamstede, I, 5, 104).

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probably serious delinquencies, but the community had not reached the degraded condition of a Dorchester or a Thame. A monition of the kind in question was a necessary step to be taken by a prelate who intended to visit under special powers an otherwise exempt community, and it was natrual that he should state the grounds of his action in the most emphatic terms. Morton's monition is not an isolated document; many of his charges are common form and were served upon other houses by other prelates; they are not the findings of an examination or the sworn depositions of witnesses, but reports that have been made to the archbishop by persons who have indeed a prima facie right to be believed, but who may well have had a grievance or a grudge against the abbot. While we are justified in thinking that such charges would not have been made by an archbishop against an abbot and community of unblemished virtue, it would be unsafe to conclude that all the charges were in every respect either bonafideor susceptible of legal proof. Meanwhile, and with no reference to the monition, the proctors of both parties were exerting themselves in Rome, and were once more successful in obtaining apparently contradictory documents, the one (3 July) safeguarding the abbey by giving it the right of appeal against any sentence passed against it, and of suspending the sentence lite pendente, the other (30 July) to the archbishop reaffirming the powers given by Quanta in Dei ecclesia in such a way as to cover most, if not all, eventualities, and with special reference to St Andrew's, Northampton.1 Beyond this point we cannot go. There is nothing to show that Morton in fact attempted to visit St Albans, though he was at last successful in dealing with Northampton in the following year. On the other hand, the St Albans chronicler says that Wallingford was successful in maintaining his abbey's immunity in all respects.2 The probability would seem to be that Morton realized that he would meet with resistance and would never find firm support at Rome, and that he therefore decided to hold his hand. Besides his attempts to correct excesses in the exempt orders, Morton also visited parts of his province in virtue of his normal powers as metropolitan, and a short summary exists of his activities in the dioceses of Winchester, Salisbury and Exeter in 1492, and in the Midlands in 1498.3 The details are very meagre; from three large houses of black monks and five priories of canons in the diocese of Winchester we learn little more than the numbers at each house; at St Swithun's and Hyde no serious 1 These and the other documents discovered by Gasquet are discussed in the article in JEH noted above. They are very diffuse and have not yet been printed, but the copies procured by the present writer from the Vatican Library were communicated to Dr I. Churchill, then librarian of Lambeth Palace Library, and presumably copies are there available to readers. 2 Reg. J. IVhethamstede, I, App. (D), 478: 'Atque tandem. . .justissimam victoriam reportavit necnon nostra privilegia omnia illaesa et inviolata cum nostro magno honore... servavit.' 3 These have been described by Professor Cla\ide Jenkins in his essay ' Cardinal Morton's Register' in Tudor Studies presented to A. F. Pollard.

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faults came to light, but the administration was faulty; of the canons we learn next to nothing. Notes of the tour in Devon and Cornwall are still more jejune, and the frequency with which all witnesses stated all to be well, even at such houses as Launceston, of which little good was heard before and after, suggests that if the religious did not wish to expatiate, they were not encouraged by the archbishop to do so.1 A few years later, in 1500, Bath was visited by its bishop, Oliver King. He found no serious moral or disciplinary faults, but he entered energetically into the economics of the priory.2 The cathedral church was in a ruinous condition owing, so he alleged, to the neglect of a series of priors, and the money that should have been spent on the fabric had gone in extravagant living. King therefore took drastic action. The income of the house was £480. From this the bishop assigned ^54 to the prior and £80 to the convent; £40 were allotted to repairs and £10 to servants' wages. The rest, perhaps £250 when other necessary expenses had been deducted, was to go to the fabric fund. He added some observations upon this arrangement. His allowance to the convent, he said, gave more latitude than the literal observance of the Rule required. As the community numbered sixteen, his allowance of £5 per annum apiece was certainly adequate: he gave further evidence of his reforming temper by a rider that monks should be given food and clothes, but not a pension or money of their own. It was late in the day for a bishop to hold such language, and we may well wonder whether the injunction was observed. As for the fabric, it may be regarded as it stands to-day as Oliver King's monument, though the credit for the actual building is chiefly due to the last prior, in whose reign the work was seriously put in hand. For Kent, some interesting information survives in Warham's register from his visitation of the diocese in 1511; some of the detecta and a number of injunctions are recorded.^ Unfortunately, no details survive from Canterbury cathedral priory; it was still, as it had been for centuries previously, by far the largest community in England. Besides the prior and seventy-nine resident monks (including eight novices) there were six students at Canterbury College and two at Paris. At Dover, a dependency of Christ Church, the old troubles appear, though not in the aggravated form that might be expected from Lay ton's account twenty years later; the monks go about the town, the novices have no grammar-master, accounts have not been rendered. At Faversham the unusual step had been taken (we are not told when or by whom) of doing away with the monetary stipend or * wages' in order to return to the communal issue of clothing. This had served as a deterrent to a number of prospective novices, though 1 Morton's Register, 51—5. 2 Bishop King's injunctions are in Monasticon, 11, 270; also in J. Britton, History and Antiquities of Bath Abbey Church, Appendix, 200-1, and elsewhere. The bishop suggests that money belonging by right to the fabric has vanished in voluptatibus, i.e. dainty living. 3 V. 'Archbishop Warham's Visitation of Monasteries, 1 5 n ' , by Mary Bateson, in EHR, vi, 18-35.

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we are told that in fact the monetary value of the allowance of clothes and other necessaries exceeded that of the previous stipend; it was said that the monks were forced, through lack of a chamberlain, to make embarrassing application for clothing to the abbot himself.1 Two houses of canons were visited: Leeds, a priory with twenty inmates, and Combwell, one with seven. At the former there is a rich crop of complaints against the prior. Besides the regular discipline in chapter, he used the lash on his subjects and even kicked the unwilling. At Combwell poverty was the rub; the canons went short in food, drink and clothing. Taken as a group, these Kentish visitations reveal a more respectable level of life than do many of those from Norfolk and Lincoln; their editor is, however, abundantly justified in seeing in the preoccupation with material and personal complaints a symptom of spiritual mediocrity.2 For the Austin canons elsewhere there are visitations at Merton in 1504 and 1509, and at Launceston and Barlinch in the latter year. Merton, one of the largest houses of the black canons, with a comfortable income of nearly £1000, was seemingly peaceful in 1504, but in 1509-10 all was going wrong. The prior, who was taking an interest in the rebuilding of St Mary's College, Oxford, and who in this very year (1509) had failed to give any account to general chapter of the moneys received for that purpose^ was clearly unsatisfactory. Bishop Foxe's injunctions4 suggest that he had committed most of the faults possible to a superior: he was continually absent at Oxford; he was defamed with several women and noted for his disreputable male associates, young and old; he gave no accounts and could furnish no inventory; he was guilty of dilapidation; he refused to take counsel; he had allowed the number of canons to remain considerably below the statutory figure; and he was rarely present in choir. One might wonder how his continued presence as prior could further benefit the house, but apparently no attempt was made to shift him. Away in the west little had altered since the days of Bishop Grandisson. At Launceston the refectory was shunned and the infirmary had decayed; canons were out all day without permission. At Barlinch there were similar faults and the house lacked a grammar-master.5 The aims and endeavours of Wolsey, as legate a latere, to reform the religious orders are discussed on another page.6 Here we are concerned 1 'Warham's Visitation', 28-30. 2 Ibid. 35. 'They lend no support to the theory that inmates of religious houses were steeped in inhuman wickedness. On the other hand, the decay of the monastic spirit is obvious throughout/ 3 AC, no. 56, p. 128. 4 These injunctions are printed as nos. cxlvii (c. 1504) and cxlix (1509 or 1510) in the appendix of documents in Major A. Heales, The Records of Merton Priory. It is noteworthy that in the year (1509) of the latter visitation the activities of the prior of Merton were on the tapis at the provincial chapter of the black canons at Leicester. No house was to pay to him its quota of the Oxford building fund until he had given a faithful account of past expenditure to the presidents (Salter, AC, 128). Nine years later he is seen handing in his books and reassuring the hysterical prior of Southwark as to the pure observance that prevailed in the order (ibid. 137-8). 5 ACy no. 94, pp. 183—4. 6 V. infra, pp. 158-60. KROIII

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only with the visitations conducted under legatine powers. They are of a character that sets them apart from all others of the period. The earlier of the two surviving is from Wenlock, an important Cluniac priory, visited in September 1523.1 There had been a disputed election in 1521, and a subsequent rebellion against the authoritarian conduct of the prior. The dispute over the election had gone to Wolsey; so now did an appeal against the prior, and Dr Allen, the cardinal's commissary-general, was sent down to visit. The detecta have not survived, but a long set of injunctions and a still more interesting series of counsels were taken down by the prior and preserved in his register. The injunctions, which are too long and minute to be summarized, have a twofold aim. The majority are directed against faults of the community or of individuals which had come to light; they are the familiar ones: drinking after compline, cardplaying, rich clothes, open doors, absence of tuition for the young monks, maintenance of hounds in the monastery. In addition, however, Allen threw in a number of more constructive decrees: that custom should not be pleaded for a breach of the Rule;2 that all, if not priests able to celebrate, should confess and communicate at frequent intervals; that all should sign permissions for financial transactions, those who might have opposed them noting the fact; that a system of fines should sanction silence in the refectory; that a dignified Gregorian chant should alone be employed in choir.3 Not content with this, Allen handed out to Wenlock a list of 'counsels' which, if generally followed, would certainly have set the monks in a far stronger position in face both of their own consciences and of the outside world. The first among these is perhaps the most original; it is an exhortation to useful craft work in the monastery.* Among the rest we may note the substitution of two hours daily recreation in the monastery for absence at a grange for bleeding; reduction of the numbers of servants, especially those employed for display; the abolition of many ritual processions round the precinct in favour of a greater attention to the essentials of the lirurgy.5 It is not stated how much of this unusual document is due to Allen himself, but references to the recent legatine constitutions suggest that we have 1 They are printed in Latin (and also in translation) by Dr Rose Graham as an appendix to her article' Roland Gosenell, Prior of Wenlock, 1521—6', in EES, 125—45; the injunctions are on pp. 139-44. 2 R. Graham, op. czt. 139: *Ne sub nomine consuetudinis palleare sategant [sic both words] corruptelas pro ut de silentio, horis canonicis et jejunio/ 3 Ibid. 142: 'Gregoriana nota utantur, et quod distincte cantent longo sillabarum protractu/ 4 Ibid. 142, no. 1 : ' Artes mechanice licite et honeste inter commonachos exerceantur, ne ociositas sitarma [sic] antiqui hostis captivandas [sic].* Dr Graham cites an interesting extract, from Preb. Clark-Maxwell, 'The Monks of Wenlock after the Suppression', where a contemporary death-notice is given of the priest William Corfill, sacrist of Wenlock in 1527 and subprior in 1540. He was a skilled bell-founder, 'a maker of organs, of a clock and chimes, and in kerving, in Masonrie, and weving of Silke and in peynting; and noe instrument of Musike beyng but that he could mende it*. 5 Ibid, 143, no. 8: *Superflue circa monasterii ambitus deinceps non celebrentur processiones, et quod in servandis vere religionis ceremoniis sese magis dedant.' This was perhaps an attempt to get in ahead of the novatores.

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here at least a selection of the decrees of reform proposed by Wolsey to the black monks in 1519, and found by them too severe.1 In any case, one who proposed such a radical programme to Wenlock with hopes of a fair issue must have been of a sanguine, or of a very shallow, temperament. Two years later, Allen, in virtue of the same powers, visited the cathedral monastery of Worcester, then under the rule of Prior More.2 He delivered his injunctions, eighteen in number, a week after his arrival. No copy of them has been discovered, but seven months later, as a result of disputes and appeals, he promulgated amendments which annulled some of the previous decrees and glossed others. This document was confirmed by Wolsey a year later, and from the wording it is possible in some cases to catch the drift of the original injunctions, which can then be compared with those issued to Wenlock.3 Nine are clearly identical, and a tenth corresponds to one of the Wenlock * counsels'; probably some others which are abrogated without comment resembled items in the earlier set, thus making it still more probable* that Allen had a scheme of general application based on Wolsey's constitutions. It is, however, clear that both he and the cardinal capitulated at Worcester to resistance, for besides the annulments, several of the glosses take all force out of the injunctions concerned. Thus the general prohibition against women entering the cloister and boys the dorter is interpreted in both cases to mean ' except with the prior's permission'.4 These relaxations are all the more remarkable in view of the very severe indictment with which the original citation opens, and indeed the whole course of the affair suggests that the common form of such citations took a deliberately harsher line than actual fact warranted.5 The third group is of visitations of all kinds in the two decades immediately before the assertion of royal supremacy threw all into the melting-pot. The earliest is a tour of Somerset by Bishop Clerke's vicargeneral in July and August 1526;6 unfortunately, few details are forth1 Ibid. 143, no. 9. Food and clothing are to be given instead of money, as in the novellae constitutiones legatine. The reforming constitutions given by the cardinal to the Austin canons, however, do not show any marked similarities to the more original features of the Wenlock injunctions (Wilkins, Concilia, m, 683-8). 2 V. J. M. Wilson, 'The Visitation Injunctions of Cardinal Wolsey and Archbishop Cranmer'. Wolsey's injunctions, translated, are on pp. 359-64. 3 Canon Wilson (p. 360) writes that the original injunctions of 17 April 1525 were followed by 'a revised and corrected form.. .similarly lost', issued on 12 November 1525; lastly, on 3 November 1536, Wolsey 'issued the injunctions in the form' given in the paper. This is not correct. Allen did indeed revise and explain his original injunctions on 12 November 1525, but it was this revision, and not a second by Wolsey himself, that the cardinal finally ratified a year later (cf. pp. 363-4). 4 Injunction 3, on p. 361 of Wilson's paper; cf. the corresponding interpretation regarding women in the precinct (injunction no. 6, p. 362). 5 This is true also of Larimer's preamble; in both cases Canon Wilson rests too much argument upon the languages used (e.g. p. 3 5 7,' a striking passage from the letter of Wolsey', and p. 358: 'Latimer is more outspoken than either Wolsey or Cranmer'). 6 Printed by Sir H. C. Maxwell-Lyte as 'Visitation of Religious Houses and Hospitals, 1526', in SRS> Collectanea, 1.

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coming. At Glastonbury the community of fifty, several of them bearing uncouth 'religious' names in the new fashion, met him with a chorus of omnia bene and were left with a few mild corrections. At Athelney all without exception pronounced all to be well; at Muchelney the only complaints were that few knew their way about the muniments and that the lay organist disturbed the brethren;1 at Bruton, newly advanced to abbatial dignity, the canons were agreed that while repairs were needed in the guest-house and infirmary, all else was satisfactory save for the beer. At Keynsham, however, always a slovenly house, little had changed since the days of Eishop Bekynton; liturgical books were wanting, there was no instructor for the four young canons, the church and main conduit were badly in need of repair, and the visitor saw a pack of hounds making free with the stalls of the canons as with their kennel.2 At Worspring the prior was at loggerheads with his six canons; he was a secretive, headstrong, tyrannical man, liable to outbursts of rage.3 In the following year a serious disturbance came to a head at Malmesbury, and the president of the Benedictine chapter, the eminent John Islip, abbot of Westminster, delegated the visitation to the abbot of Gloucester.4 The story is not unlike that of Whitby more than a century previously: a rough, self-willed abbot and a discontented community had destroyed the order and delicacy of the religious life, and a slovenly, sordid, and at times a positively vicious spirit had taken hold. The whole place was at sixes and sevens. The abbot accused ten of the monks of rebellion, and added apostasy, theft and fornication to the charge. The monks for their part accused the abbot of mismanagement and harshness; he beat them with a stick and listened to tales about them picked up in the town by a Mrs Alice Taylor, who was always in and out of his rooms, though no criminal charge was based on her visits. A group from the middle and lower parts of the community were, like Hawkesgarth and his friends at Whitby, definitely nefarious. Several had broken out of the house for longer or shorter periods without leave, and were charged with larceny and incontinence.5 Finally, a company of eight, abetted by others and armed with bows, swords and clubs, had loosed a couple of friends from the monastic prison and laid siege to the abbot's lodging, putting him in fear of his life.6 The prior, who was said to keep hounds, was fairly 1 Maxwell-Lyte, Visitation, p. 219: 'Organista monasterii perturbat conventum.' The ambiguous phrase leaves us uncertain whether the disturbing factor was the views of the organist or his voluntaries. 2 Ibid. 216: 'Prospiciens chorum una cum ecclesia esse nimis immundum atque canibus interdum plenum ac si spelunca esset eorundem/ No serious moral charges were made. 3 Ibid. 223-5. 4 The notes of this visitation are summarized in LP, iv (ii), 3678; they are printed in full by Pantin, MC, in, no. 284, pp. 124—36. Cf. also the account by Dom Aeldred Watkin in VCH, Wilts, in, 225. 5 MC, in, 126. For Thomas Hawkesgarth, v. ibid. 305, and RO, 11, 206. 6 MC, in, 126: ' Arcubus, sagittis, gladiis fustibus et aliis armis invasivis januas abbatis ibidem obsiderunt... ac mortis periculum abbatis predicti crudeliter minantes.' No doubt both parties made the most of their stories.

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impartial in his complaints, though inclining to the abbot's side. Nevertheless, he stated that the abbot held chapter in English, and shortened matt ins when the clock went wrong. There was no reading in the refectory and guests slept in the dorter through lack of other accommodation. Such was the state of the scandal when the visitor arrived. A careful examination showed that the right lay on the whole with the abbot, and six of the rebels were excommunicated: the precise effect of this does not appear. The abbot promised to refurnish the guesthouse and infirmary, to repair the clock, to restore the fare of yore and to be more kindly in correction. Nothing is known of the outcome of this. Three years later, and a year after Wolsey's fall, Marton-in-the Forest (Galtres) a house of Austin canons in the North Riding, was visited by the dean and chapter of York.1 On this occasion, indeed, nothing remarkable came to light but, on 9 May 1531, two canons presented Archbishop Edward Lee with a long list of articles against the prior; though clearly the issue of jaundiced minds, they cannot be wholly without a basis of fact. The prior, they say, originally intruded uncanonically, wastes his substance and affections on his relations, and provides the canons with 'sower drynke' and 'stynkyng bief with maggotts in it'; on occasion he threatens them with a drawn dagger. One of his relatives has the key of the dorter, and to prevent conviviality at nights follows the canons up the stairs after compline and then departs, jangling the keys and observing that 'he has loked the brethren in', to spend a pleasant hour in the local alehouse, while the imprisoned canons, even if one 'shuld dye for a drynke in the night', must perforce await the mattins bell with thirst unslaked.2 If, however, the prior's side of the story is to be believed, these measures were not always successful in preventing nightly potations in the infirmary, or in hindering one George Sutton from wandering abroad by moonlight. Marton, in short, like many another Augustinian house, was in an advanced state of decay. A year before the tour of the royal visitors began, Cranmer, in the second year of his episcopate, visited Worcester with metropolitan powers. The injunctions were not sent till the following February; they are a careful composition, following traditional lines in both matter and form, save for the first injunction of all.3 The rest had all been heard before: the compilation of an inventory and accounts, the copying of all documents into the register before they are sealed, the engagement of a grammar-master, regulations for refectory and infirmary, mention of individuals by name. The only novel decree, which reflects the personal views of the new primate, is the establishment of a daily lecture of one 1 The Marton documents were printed by Rev. J. S. Purvis among * Notes from the Diocesan Register at York', in YAJ, vol. xxxv (1943), 393—403. The visitation was made by authority of the Dean and Chapter, sede vacante. 2 This information is given by two canons in their accusation of the prior; they quote the janitor's words. 3 They are printed in translation by Canon Wilson (v. supra, p. 83 n. 2), op. cit. 364-7.

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hour on Holy Scripture, to be expounded literally. To ensure time for this, the office of Our Lady and the penitential psalms are to be discontinued as a choral function and recited in private.1 Finally, there are records from Yorkshire of a visitation undertaken by Archbishop Lee on the very eve of the royal enquiry, as a forlorn hope, it would seem, to forestall interference.2 Details survive for three houses only: at St Mary's, York, a very wealthy house, the abbot was defamed of sinful relations with a married woman of Overton; he wore silk and velvet, and shoes with gilt buckles, and his horse had expensive trappings; he gave no accounts and kept an alehouse in the abbey precinct. The monks, also, wore luxurious clothes.3 Lee's injunctions were delayed by various wrangles over jurisdiction, and were given only a few weeks before the general visitation began. In this Layton and Legh, though accusing some of the monks, made no charge against the abbot. The archbishop himself had done no more than reprimand. It has been suggested with some plausibility that as the archbishop had been obstructed for some time by the abbot's plea of exemption, he took his revenge by giving at least a show of credence to what was only insubstantial gossip, while on the other hand he did not use the inquisitorial methods of the royal commissioners to extract confessions from the rank and file. At the other houses that Lee (through his commissary) visited, such as Helagh Park and Warter, there were no open faults against morality, but the common life was largely at an end; the enclosure was not kept, and the canons were allowed no share in the administration. In addition, girdles and rings of precious metal were worn.4 1 Wilson, art. cit. 364. 2 V. * Archbishop Lee's Visitations, 1534-5', in YAJ, vol. xvi. The article is unsigned; possibly Canon J. T. Fowler is the author. 3 Ibid. 446-7. 4 Ibid. 438-9 (Helagh Park); 445-6 (Warter).

CHAPTER VII

MONASTIC PERSONALITIES I. WILLIAM SELLING

The life of William Selling,1 monk and later prior of the cathedral monastery at Canterbury, was passed entirely within the bounds of the fifteenth century and, so far as the significant dates of his career go, it might have seemed more fitting to include his name along with that of Whethamstede, whose younger contemporary he was, than with those of the monks of the Reformation period. There is, however, a wider gulf between Whethamstede and Selling than between the latter and Kidderminster; Whethamstede passed through an awakening world with unseeing eyes while Selling, however limited his own creative powers may have been, at least recognized the new world and hoped to diffuse its spirit. William Selling (? 1430-94) took his monastic name from a village some four miles south-east of Faversham, and entered Christ Church as a boy. His family name was probably Tyll. He is found as prior taking an interest in the education of a boy, Richard Tyll, and Agnes Tyll, widow of William Tyll, was admitted to confraternity in the priory and granted, along with her husband, the privilege of sepulture in the cathedral near the body of St Thomas.2 The young monk was sent to Oxford, where he was a member of Canterbury College from 1454 till 1464, attaining to the priesthood in 1456 and to the B.D. in 1458.3 Letters written by him at this time are in a correct and concise Latin style that contrasts very favourably with that of Whethamstede; they show also a respect for the patronage of Prior Thomas Goldstone. At Oxford Selling attended the courses on Latin rhetoric of Stefano Surigone, and must have known Thomas Chaundler and perhaps Tiptoft, though it is not necessary to suppose that they alone were responsible for giving his studies a classical bent or suggesting a journey to Italy; in any case, he received in September 1464 leave to go abroad to study for three years in Italy at any university of his choice. He was accompanied by a confrere, William Hadleigh, later sub1 Contemporary records of incidents in Selling's life are not lacking, but the information they give is factual or insignificant, and lacks all intimacy. For such records v. Literae Cantuarienses and Christ Church Letters (both ed. J. B. Sheppard); W. G. Searle, Chronicle ofj. Stone; W. A. Pantin, Canterbury College, Oxford, vol. Ill; J. Gairdner, Letters and Papers .. .of Richard HI and Henry VII. Among modern works the article in DNB is remarkably inaccurate; there is useful information, needing control, in Gasquet, The Eve of the Reformation, 30 seqq., and excellent sketches in W. F» Schirmer, Der englische Fruhumanismus, 154-62, 181, and R. Weiss, Humanism in England, 153-9, ant ^ 'Humanism in Oxford*. 2 Pantin, Canterbury College, in, 122-3; Lit. Cant, in, 315. The date of the admission to confraternity is 7 February 1491. Cf. also Gasquet, op. ciu 22 n. 1. 3 V. details supplied by Pantin in Schirmer, op. cit. 181.

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prior at Christ Church (1471-99).1 The two monks visited Padua, and stayed for some time with a widow lady, Johannita Bely, whose good offices were subsequently recognized by the grant of a letter of confraternity;2 they also stayed at Bologna, where both were admitted to the doctorate in theology, a rare privilege for any save friars; they were indeed two of the only four monks on the Bologna lists between the creation of the faculty in 1364 and 1500.3 Selling can have been in England only a short time when he undertook a second journey from October 1469 till some date in 1471; his companion on this occasion was Reginald Goldstone, who became on his return warden of Canterbury College l^ut was recalled to Christ Church later to be Selling's right-hand man.4 This journey had as its ostensible purpose a visit to Rome to secure from Paul II plenary indulgences for the customary jubilee in honour of St Thomas, held every fifty years and due in 1470, the tricentenary of the martyrdom. The petition was backed by letters from the king and queen; it was duly granted, and a Roman citizen, Pietro Mellini, received from the grateful convent the same recognition as Signora Bely for similar offices of hospitality.^ It was probably on this journey, returning from Rome, that Selling stayed at Florence, made the acquaintance of the eighteen-yearold Angelo Poliziano, already celebrated as the translator of Homer, and was initiated into Greek studies by Demetrias Chalcondylas.6 On his return, Selling held for a short time the post of chancellor, which had acquired some of the duties originally discharged by the precentor, but within little more than a year he was elected prior, a position which he held till his death on the feast of St Thomas, 29 December 1494. He had, however, a third opportunity of visiting Italy, for early in 1487 he was the fifth of ten ambassadors sent to offer the homage of Henry VII to Pope Innocent VIII. The arrival of the embassy on 8 May, and its audience of the pope on 14 May are duly recorded by Burchard, the papal master 1 Pantin, op. cit. 107—8; Lit. Cant, in, 239. 2 Printed by Sheppard, Christ Church Letters, nos. xxxviii-xxxix. As the lady's husband was a Venetian, it has sometimes been stated that Selling stayed in that city. Actually she lived at Padua and was English by birth. Cf. Paduan archive cited by Weiss, Humanism in England, 154 n. 3. 3 S. Mazetti, Memorie storiche sopra Vuniversita di Bologna, 309. For eloge of Hadley, v. Chronicle ofj. Stone, fo. 92 a. 4 The date of their departure c. 19 October 1469 appears in a letter of one Robert Hill, who obtained a safe-conduct for them (Christ Church Letters, no. xxiii); their expenses 'pro indulgencia adquirenda contra annum jubileum' are in Pantin, Canterbury College, in, 108—9. For Goldstone, v. long eloge in Chronicle ofJ. Stone, fo. 58^. He is referred to by J. B. Sheppard (Christ Church Letters, p. xxii) as * the Prime Minister' of Selling, and Schirmer, op. cit. 156, echoes the phrase—'eine Art Premierminister des Abtes'. The word in the text is perhaps more suitable. 5 Lit. Cant. Ill, 244—8, where the petition is printed, and Christ Church Letters, xxxix—xli. Mellini was a canonist who had acted for English monasteries. 6 Leland, De Scriptoribus Britanniae, 482, confuses the journeys of 1464 and 1469; he is followed by Gasquet. For correction, v. Schirmer, op. cit. 156. Selling may, however, have learnt Greek either at Oxford or on his first journey; cf. Weiss, Humanism in England, 159 n. 6.

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of ceremonies. Selling, he tells us, rode in a black habit and black hood, with a black hat, but Thomas Milling, whilom abbot of Westminster and now bishop of Hereford, was less correctly dressed.1 The prior was the orator of the party, and acquitted himself well; the draft of his oration, in Selling's hand, is still extant, as is also the petition which he presented to the pope, and which has the autograph fiat of the pope against each clause.2 On this journey Selling took with him Thomas Linacre, a native of Canterbury and the son of a Kentish landowner, who may have been his pupil for a time at Canterbury and who had recently, in 1484, become Fellow of All Souls. Linacre was introduced to Poliziano and Chalcondylas at Florence, and remained there to join their pupils, the sons of Lorenzo de' Medici, not returning till 1499.3 As for Selling, his success on this diplomatic mission was recognized by his frequent employment on subsequent embassies, including one in 1490 to Tours, where he met Robert Gaguin, the great French humanist who was acting for Charles VIII. In addition to his diplomatic activities, Selling appears as an active prior, as a preacher against heresy,4 as the personal friend and mentor of several of his monks, the patron of Canterbury College and the authority responsible for the erection and possibly some of the details of the design of the great central tower of Canterbury, Bell Harry, of which he expected to see the completion but which was in fact finished a few months after his death.5 William Selling has received honourable mention in every recent account of English humanism. As a scholar or writer his contribution to the English renaissance was not large. Besides his Roman oration and some notes, the only surviving composition of his is a translation from the Greek of a sermon of St John Chrysostom dated 1488, which is of interest as being perhaps the first translation made by an Englishman from that language in the fifteenth century.6 These works, indeed, together with his letters, are by themselves evidence that he approached the humanists of Italy with a receptive mind, to absorb a culture higher than that of his own country. Selling's significance, however, depends not so much upon his own writings as upon his activities as a collector of books and a transmitter of learning. For Selling's manuscript collection there are several witnesses, including Leland, who tells of a De Republica of Cicero and other books that perished, and of some that survived. Among these may well be the Homer and the Euripides now at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and 1 J. Burchardi Rerum urbanicarum commentarii, ed. L. Thouasne, 257—9. 2 B.M. MS. Cott., Cleop. E. in, fos. 123-32; Canterbury Cathedral Chartae Antiquae C. 187. For Selling's Italian hand, v. W. A. Pantin, 'English Monastic Letter Books', 209. 3 For Linacre, v. Schirmer, op. cit. 162-3, and DNB. 4 Chronicle of J. Stone, 108—9. 5 Christ Church Letters, no. lviii, Selling to Archbishop Morton, c. 1494. 6 B.M. Harleian 6237 and Additional 15,673. For William of Worcester on Selling's interest in Greek philology, Gasquet, Eve of Reformation) 25 n., cites B.M. MS. Cott. Julius, F. vn, fos. 118.

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a Latin Chrysostom at Trinity College.1 The prior improved the library over the prior's chapel, and provided a room in the eastern range of the cloister with glass windows for students.2 Seemingly, however, his books never reached the conventual library, but remained in the prior's lodging, where they were for the most part destroyed by the fire that broke out during Layton's visitation in 1535.3 It has generally been assumed that Selling bought the books for his convent rather than for himself, but the practice of earlier days, and the fact that the books never reached the library, does not encourage this opinion. Similarly, the frequent references in modern works to the cloister school at Canterbury in which Selling is said to have taught rest upon no contemporary evidence or similar practice. Selling resided very little at Christ Church before he was prior, and even if there is some evidence that he lectured on Greek grammar4 this would have been to a small group of monks, not to a ' school' in the renaissance or modern meaning of the word. If Linacre was in any sense of the word his pupil, it must have been when he was a boy in the prior's household; Linacre learnt most of what he knew at Oxford and at Florence. No tradition of Greek learning or of any unusual devotion to humanistic studies seems to have survived at Canterbury. The monks of Canterbury College in the first decades of the sixteenth century resembled in all respects their brethren at Gloucester or Durham Colleges, and there is no suggestion in the correspondence of Erasmus that Christ Church or its monks were in the van of the new learning. In short, Selling was a notable example of the first generation of English humanism in the age of the philologists and collectors which preceded that of the great scholars of the religious and critical 'enlightenment', when humanism became a philosophy of life in the hands of such men as Erasmus and Jacques Lefevre, but he made no great or original contribution to literary or monastic history. He had the fortune to be the patron of Linacre, and to introduce Greek to Canterbury, but he holds no important place in the development of the Renaissance. 1 For this, v. M. R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover, 1—Hi- The Homer and Euripides are now MSS. 81 and 403 in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; the Chrysostom is MS. 100 at Trinity College. 2 A Canterbury obituary, printed by H. Wharton, Anglia Sacra, 1, 145—<S, gives many details of Selling's successful administration, e.g. 'Aedificavit turrim quandam camerae Prioris vocatae La Gloriet contiguam... Librarium etiam supra Capellam Prioris situatam perpulchra coelatura adornavit; quam etiam nonnullis libris instaurari fecit, ad usum maxime literarum studio deditorum, quos miro studio et benevolentia nutrivit et fovit. Australem vero partem Claustri ad usum studiosorum confratrum vitreari fecit.' There follows an account of Selling's work on the manors which recalls Henry of Eastry rather than William More. 3 Leland, De Scriptoribus, 483; LP, ix, 669. 4 The authority for this is William of Worcester, who gives notes on Greek orthography and accents as taught by Selling; cf. B.M. MS. Cott. Julius, F. vn, fo. ii8 r .

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II. RICHARD KIDDERMINSTER

During the greater part of the period covered by this volume the most distinguished English monk was undoubtedly Richard Kidderminster (c. 1462-c. 1532), monk of Winchcombe and abbot of that house for almost forty years (1488-1527).1 Winchcombe, which had been of considerable importance after its first foundation in 798, and again on its revival under King Edgar, had been affected less than many of its sister-houses by the Norman plantation and had remained thereafter a house of the second or third rank, distinguished neither by any eminence on the part of its abbots nor by the literary and artistic work of its monks, nor by any great architectural magnificence, though it had maintained a sound financial position, and in the early sixteenth century ranked among the well-to-do houses such as Malmesbury and the New Minster at Winchester. It had, indeed, in the person of its prior, Aldwin, rekindled the fires of monastic life in the shrines of the north, but this had been a personal enterprise rather than a corporate achievement; it was in fact an attempt on the part of three individuals to escape from the conventional mediocrity of the south. Kidderminster, therefore, owed his prestige almost entirely to his personal qualities, though he himself pays tribute to his predecessor, Abbot Twyning (1477—88) who, himself an Oxford man, sent the young Kidderminster to Gloucester College at the age of twenty-two.2 There he studied letters: that is, no doubt, the new humanism, which included a study of literature and prose and verse composition, and practice in letter-writing, on a scale hitherto unattempted in the claustral and other elementary schools. After less than four years, Abbot Twyning died, and the small community, probably of less than twenty monks, elected the promising young Oxford student. Unlike many abbots in similar case in the past, he was determined not to let his studies suffer. He taught himself theology in his own cloister, and when he had attracted a group of promising young recruits, he decided to implement fully the traditional machinery of monastic studies, which had rarely been put fully into motion save at the largest monasteries such as Durham and Canterbury. 1 For the main outlines of Kidderminster's life and activities, v. DNB, s.v. Kedermyster. There are notices of him also in a long note by P. S. Allen in Erasmi Epistolae, iv, ep. 1061; D. Royce, Landbok de Winchelcumba, 11, xxxiii-xxxv; and R. Graham, VCH, Glos, 11, 71. Some of our information comes from a history of Winchcombe compiled by Kidderminster himself in 1523. The MS. of this appears to have perished in the Great Fire of London, but extracts made by Brian Twyne and R. Dodsworth survive, and of these parts were printed in Monasticon, 11, 301; they were also used by Anthony Wood. Kidderminster's public activities find mention in all the sources for the history of the early decades of the sixteenth century. For his achievements at Winchcombe, v. W. A. Pantin, 'Abbot Kidderminster and Monastic Studies', in DR, XLVII. 2 This autobiographical passage is cited from Bodl. Twyne MSS. xxiv, 551 seqq. by Pantin, art. cit. 199-200.

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The Winchcombe community had increased to twenty-eight, and a regular system of studies was imposed, two bachelors of divinity lecturing daily on the Old and New Testaments, while the abbot himself lectured twice weekly on the Sentences. Kidderminster, writing many years later, in 1523, but giving no date for the circumstances he describes, dwells with some complacency on his achievements: It was [he writes] afinesight to see how the brethren devoted themselves to sacred learning, how they made use of Latin even in their familiar conversations, and how the cloister at Winchcombe at that time had all the appearance of a young university, though on a minute scale. Added to this, regular observance v/as so ardently observed among us, and brotherly charity was so honoured, that you would have said that there could not possibly be another such family, so united, so harmonious and yet so small, in the whole of England. The good God alone knows what a joy it was then for me to be immersed in sacred studies with my brethren in the cloister. There day and night I passed the time at my books in a little study I had constructed; would that I had allowed it to stand till the present day! My industry was such that practically all the learning I have in Scripture and divinity was gained there in the cloister. I have written all this that those who come after may learn that theology may be as fruitfully studied in the cloister as at the university. And Kidderminster goes on to instance the achievement of Bede the Venerable, and to wish that monks would follow his example and join monastic observance to their studies, rather than repeat that nothing can be done outside a university.1 This passage, which owes its preservation to the attraction it had for two seventeenth-century antiquaries, has often been quoted without reference to its historical background. Meritorious as was the achievement of Kidderminster and charming as is his picture of the cloister at the foot of the Cotswolds, the programme was not original2 and the results were not in fact remarkable, though only two years before he wrote a grace was passed at Oxford allowing the monks of Winchcombe who had learnt logic and philosophy in their monastery to dispute immediately after the masters and bachelors at Oxford.3 Kidderminster never lost his enthusiasm for studies or his zeal for regular observance. He compiled some sort of translation of the Rule and drew up an important Register of his house which contained its history from the earliest times along with lives of the abbots and other treatises. He also used the opportunities given him as visitor of other 1 The passage is quoted by Wood in Historic, et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis (ed. J. Gutch, 1647), I, 298; cf. also Wood's Athenae Oxonienses, I, 61—3. 2 Pan tin, art. cit., shows that Kidderminster's programme was little more than an up-to-date version of the claustral school in scientiae primitivae and the theological lectures prescribed by Clement V and the Council of Vienne (decree Ne in agro) and in the Benedictine Constitutions of 1336. For such a school elsewhere, v. Rites of Durham, -73 Cf. Wood, Historia. . .Oxoniensis, s.a. 1521.

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houses to explore their records. He himself has left an interesting record of one of his finds: Coming in due course [it was in 1513] to the abbey of St Mary's at York, and spending a long time there discussing points of observance with the monks, I learnt from what they said that their house owed its beginning, and the manner of its monastic discipline, to Evesham, while the monastery of St Cuthbert at Durham was similarly beholden to Winchcombe. This, he says, was news to him; he pondered over it, and when he passed on to Whitby, and made enquiries there also, he was shown an ancient volume giving an account of it all. Overjoyed even to the shedding of tears at his discovery, he came in due course to Durham, where he kept his counsel till he had finished his visitation. He then related his discoveries to the monks, and told them that they owed their monastic life to little Winchcombe. This [he continues] was not received with great enthusiasm by the ancients of Durham, who politely but tersely conveyed the impression that they had never heard anything of the kind in their lives. When I perceived this I begged them to be so good as to produce an account of their foundation. The prior, an excellent man, at once ordered the document to be produced, and on the very first page I found what I had dearly wished to know [the foundation, that is, of Durham priory by Aldwin]. Let all the brethren of Winchcombe, present and future [he concludes], reflect what a glory and a joy it is to them (and will be, as I hope, while the world endures) to think that such a famous monastery as Durham, and one which in regular observance surpasses all others in the realm, should have taken its origin from such a poor little house as ours.1 Despite the modest size of his abbey, Richard Kidderminster soon rose to eminence among his brethren in the habit. As early as 1492 he was general collector of the contributions to a benevolence levied upon all members of the general chapter for the war in France;2 in 1513, as has been seen, he was appointed visitor of a number of houses including all those of the northern province,3 and in 1519-20, at the time of Cardinal Wolsey's attempted reform, he was third president of the chapter.4 Meanwhile, he had achieved celebrity in a wider field. In 1512 he was chosen, along with Silvester de Giglis of Worcester, John Fisher of Rochester and Sir Thomas Docwra, Prior of St John, to represent the country at the council of the Lateran.5 It was probably not his first journey to Rome, for we hear of his having preached on several occasions before the pope, and of having done some historical research at St John Lateran.6 Three years 1 Bodl. MS. Twyne, xxiv, p. 544. I must thank Mr Pantin for providing me with a transcript of this. 2 MC, in, 192. 3 The certificate for this visit to Durham is extant and has been printed in MC, HI, 234. 4 MCy in, 119. 5 LP, ed. Brodie, 1, 1048, 1067, 1170 (1). The two last references suggest that Kidderminster did not reach Italy with the others. 6 This is in an unpublished part of the Twyne MS.

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after the council he attained national fame with his sermon at Paul's Cross upholding to the full the clerical privileges which had been attacked by the Franciscan, Dr Standish, in the heat of the controversy over the death of Richard Hunne.1 Besides his work on the history of his own monastery and his compendium of the Rule, he wrote against Luther defending the doctrine of indulgences. His work on the Rule has not been preserved, but it impressed Bishop Longland of Lincoln so much that he proposed to send copies to all the religious houses of his large diocese.2 Another humanist among his friends was Edward Lee, the antagonist of Erasmus and later archbishop of York, who bears testimony to Kidderminster's good nature.3 This last quality, or something akin to it, is seen in the few letters of his that have been preserved, such as that congratulating Wolsey on his elevation to York in 1514, when he descants upon the Chancellor's early promotion and congratulates Oxford on her distinguished son, or his later letter to the cardinal, accompanying four pies each containing two Severn lampreys,4 or his two letters, dating from the last years of his life, conveying his best wishes and compliments to Cromwell.5 All this, comprehensible as it may be, seems to indicate that his resounding defence of clerical privilege at Paul's Cross was rather a professional's defence of his order than a confession of religious principle. Certainly one of the last extant references to him is in a letter of the king to his representatives at Rome, urging that his marriage suit should be referred back to England, and suggesting that the judges should be Archbishop Warham and Kidderminster, 'a man of remarkable learning and experience'.6 Some years before this, Kidderminster, as a man of sixty-five, had resigned his abbacy, though he is still occasionally alluded to as' the abbot of Winchcombe'. He retained his old prestige, however, as the king's letter and those of Robert Joseph of Evesham show; perhaps also he retained a measure of responsibility for his house, which might account for the necessity of keeping in good odour with Cromwell. The date of Kidderminster's death is not known. It appears as 1531 in works of reference, but in fact the last known letter is that to Cromwell of 13 January 1532, when he was in good health and making his plans for the coming summer. Kidderminster, though a somewhat shadowy personality, is one of the most attractive figures among the black monks of the generation before the deluge. One of the group whom the new learning affected in different ways, he is an antiquarian rather than a humanist, but his enlightened and orderly rule at Winchcombe shows that he had the interests of religion, albeit perhaps a conventional religion, at heart, while his history of his house and his interest in original documents show him to be of the age of 1 LP. n, 1313. For Standish, v. supra, pp. 53-4. 2 Cf. Allen, Erasmi Epistolae, IV, 163. 3 Cf. Erasmi Epistolae iv, 62-3; ep. 1061 (from Edward Lee): 'Winchelcumbensis nemini male vult.' 4 LP, 1, 3925; HI, 668. 5 Ibid, v, 510. 6 Ibid, vi, 327.

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Leland and Bale rather than of Whethamstede. The results of his reorganization of studies at Winchcombe were not spectacular; we know of no literary work due to his teaching, and the Winchcombe monks who appear in the correspondence of Robert Joseph of Evesham, or in the Cromwell papers, are not distinguishable from those of other neighbouring houses. There is no reason to suppose that Kidderminster, had he been ten years younger, would have joined Richard Reynolds and the Carthusians, or even that he would have made bones about surrendering his abbey, but we feel that for him, at least, such a surrender would have caused more than a private anguish. Certainly, if what we have of his writings reflect his inmost feelings, he would have felt what many of our own age feel, that an institution of venerable antiquity was receiving a hasty judgment, and that something of value was being lost to England beyond recovery. Among the many secondary results of the humanist and critical activity of the Renaissance was a new interest in antiquities of every kind, and the birth of antiquarian pursuits and studies. An early harbinger had been William of Worcester, that diligent pacer of churches, but the class may be said to have achieved full citizenship only with the work of John Leland. Shortly before the Dissolution there are signs that the monks and religious, who in other lands were so soon to excel as antiquaries, were beginning to take up with the new interest. Richard Kidderminster, as we have seen, eagerly searched for records of the past both at Winchcombe and when acting as visitor at Whitby and Durham, and Bale began his excavations among the Carmelite archives from his early days in the habit. We have a glimpse of another abbot-antiquary in the writings of John Twyne (?i 501-81), in early life schoolmaster at Canterbury and always a conservative, himself an antiquary and the father and grandfather of scholars. Among his friends at Canterbury in early manhood were the abbot and prior of St Augustine's. The former, John Essex or Foche (abbot, 1522-38), was interested both in the Latin classics and in ancient British history; the latter, John Dygon, who was, as has been seen, a musician of-note, was also a classicist. Twyne gives us a sketch of the abbot, summering in his manor at Sturry in the Stour valley east of Canterbury and visited by his prior and the young lawyer Henry Wotton, soon to be Cranmer's first dean. It is a pleasant conversation piece of four accomplished men, two elderly and two young, and Twyne pauses to reflect upon the sad turn the abbot's fortunes were to take when he, once a Lord of Parliament, was left to decay in grief and squalor. The picture is overdrawn, for Abbot Essex, after surrendering his abbey, spent the rest of his life at his manor of Sturry with a comfortable income suited to the life of a country gentleman.1 1 Joannis Twini Bolingdunensis Angli, de rebus Albionicis, Britannicis atque Anglicis Commentariorum libri duo, 4—40. Twyne laments that his friend after the Dissolution 'in luctu et squalore senex contabuit' (p. 6). As the abbot had the manor house at Sturry, together with a pension of £61 (say, at least £3000 at present (1957) value) his surroundings need have reflected no more than a moderate degree of squalor.

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THE TUDOR SCENE III.

JOHN ISLIP

John Islip was born at the village of that name in Oxfordshire on 10 June 1464.1 The manor was part of the ancestral inheritance of Westminster, the gift of Edward the Confessor, whose birthplace it was; the splendour of medieval Westminster came and went with a child of that quiet village.2 John entered Westminster on the feast of St Benedict, 21 March 1480, and was ordained six years later; in 1487 he became chaplain to Abbot Estney, holding the post till 1492. In an earlier age public opinion in many monasteries had insisted on a rota of the abbot's chaplains, fearing favouritism and the presence among the monks of the cloister of a devoted * abbot's man', but such checks had long ceased. The post was one, like that of a bishop's secretary in modern times, which put a young man's foot on the first rung of the ladder of promotion, and Islip soon became subalmoner (at an unspecified date), treasurer and warden of the churches^ (1492-9), warden of Queen Eleanor's manors (1492—9), abbot's receiver (1496-7) and cellarer (1496-9). His mind had no speculative or literary bent, and he was never sent to Oxford or Cambridge,4 but it is an interesting sign of the times that he was admitted to Gray's Inn in 1492. At the end of the fifteenth century the common law was a fashionable education for the land-owning classes and ambitious young men; the realistic and acquisitive Englishmen of the day thought it more profitable than a university education; and monks were beginning to follow the fashion, as they had followed the friars to the universities in a previous age; the common law was more useful than the canon law to an administrator. Abbot Estney died in 1498; Abbot Fascet who succeeded him immediately appointed Islip as his prior; two years later, after more than a year's illness, Fascet died, and on 27 October 1500 the prior was elected abbot by acclamation.5 His ability in subordinate office had no doubt become apparent, and he had in addition taken a principal part in what might well have become an epoch-making move in Westminster history, and one which in any case gave to the fabric its final and in many ways its most beautiful appendage. Some years before 1498 the popular devotion to Henry VI had become so widespread and so intense that Henry VII determined to petition Rome for a canonization and a shrine at Windsor.6 1 For his career, v. E. H. Pearce, The Monks of Westminster', 167-8; H. F. Westlake, Westminster Abbey, I, 157—80 et al.\ and J. A. Robinson, 'The Benedictine Abbey of Westminster', in CQR, LXIV. His family name may have been Giles; the arms of that family appear beneath his portrait in his Obituary Roll, and St Giles is pictured assisting at his deathbed. 2 The place has a passing familiarity to many as the first (or last) port of call on the leisurely journey that helps to emphasize the distance and the sense of adventure for the traveller who passes from one of the ancient universities to the other. 3 Sc. of Ashwell, Staines and Oakham. 4 The connection of Westminster with Cambridge began in 1499. 5 The account of his election and installation in R. Widmore, History of Westminster Abbey, 234—44, is drawn from documents in the muniments of the Abbey. 6 Westlake, op. cit. 11, 358-65.

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The claims of Windsor to the relics were immediately contested by the existing rivals Chertsey (the original tomb) and Westminster, and after a trial before the Lord Chancellor and the Privy Council judgment was given in favour of Westminster on 5 March 1498. The successful claimant now became the party most interested in the proposed canonization of the king; Henry VII was to expedite this and obtain (for a consideration) licence to translate the body, while Westminster went ahead with the preparation of a shrine, the new Lady Chapel, in which both the king and his mother, the Lady Margaret, took considerable interest. As is well known, neither canonization nor translation took place. The canonization was delayed, either because Henry VII recoiled from the necessary expense or because it was agreed to wait till the building was ready to receive the shrine. In the event, Henry died before the chapel was completed ; his son showed no interest in the project of canonization, while the late king's directions for his own monument and Masses were on the most lavish scale. In the sequel, the chapel became his in popular esteem, and his son was spared the awkward situation that might have arisen had he found it necessary to discourage superstitious practices by confiscating the treasures accumulating at the shrine of a recently canonized predecessor. Meanwhile, the care of the building operations had from the beginning rested with Islip, at first as prior acting for Abbot Fascet (1498-1500) and then as abbot. The two abbots before him had engrossed the important spending and administrative offices of sacrist and warden of the new work, and Islip kept the two posts in hand for the thirty-two years of his rule,1 thus becoming responsible both for the completion of the vaulting and paving of the nave and for the construction and furnishing of the new Lady Chapel.3 In addition, he added the Jericho Parlour to the domestic buildings3 and constructed the Jesus Chapel as his own place of burial.4 For all this he deserves an honourable position in the last generation of great monastic builders. Islip was on easy relations of friendship with Henry VII,5 and the young king Henry VIII made an even more extensive use of his services, though he never became a political figure. He joined the Privy Council in 1513, was a trier of petitions in Parliament from 1510 onwards and from 1512 was on the Commission of Peace for Middlesex. In 1513 he was noted in the Navy List as part owner of the Kateryn Fortileia, and he was associated in various ways with both More and Wolsey. During the second and 1 Pearce, loc. cit. 2 Westlake, 1, 193-5. 3 Ibid. 181 and plate 23. 4 The identity of the Jesus Chapel with Islip's chantry was finally established by J. A. Robinson, art. cit., and is accepted by Westlake, 1, 181. It is the chapel between those of St John the Evangelist and St John the Baptist, i.e. between the south-east corner of the east aisle of the north transept and the westernmost chapel of the chevet. For illustrations, v. drawing in the Obituary Roil (v. infra, p. 98) and Westlake, 1, pi. 22. 5 There is record of the king's dining with the abbot and of the latter presenting him on another occasion with two marrowbone puddings. For what follows, v. Westlake, 1, 164 seqq. and refs.

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third decades of the century his name occurs frequently in the records of public events and services though rather at the circumference than at the centre. A few of his activities may be instanced: thus in 1525 he was at Glastonbury arranging for the election of a successor to Abbot Bere, and it was probably he who suggested the name of Whiting to Wolsey. From 1526 onwards he was connected with several trials for heresy, some of which took place in the chapterhouse of Westminster where, in particular, Thomas Bilney was tried in 1527. In 1529 he took a minor part in the divorce proceedings, and duly signed the petition to the pope in July 1530. A year later he was proposed, as a * good old father', as an alternative to Kidderminster if an assessor to Warham were needed for a trial in England.1 A little earlier, in 1529, there had been a move to include him, among others, in the Praemunire indictment drawn up against Wolsey; proceedings had been stayed, to the king's material advantage. In the last year of his life Westminster joined the growing number of monasteries paying a large annual fee to Thomas Cromwell. In monastic affairs, Islip gave practical support to both Gloucester College at Oxford and Buckingham College at Cambridge. He took his share in the work of the monastic general-chapter, by which he was often appointed visitor of the London and midland district, and of which he appears as president in the only two chapters (in 1520 and 1527) of the period between 1500 and 1536 for which the name of a president is recorded. It was in 1527 that he took cognizance of the deplorable condition of Malmesbury abbey.* Islip died at his manor of La Neyte by the riverside at Chelsea on Sunday 12 May 1532. His funeral was conducted on a scale of the greatest magnificence; the hearse, escorted by monks, retainers and heralds, was followed by multitudes of the city folk, the procession filling the whole road between Chelsea and Westminster. After Dirge and Mass in the presbytery of the Abbey, the coffin was removed to the place prepared for it where the principal mourners were entertained to a refreshment of sweet bread, spices and 'marmylate', of which they partook 'over the Chappell of the defuncte' what time 'they of the Churche did burye the defuncte in the said Chappelle'.3 His obituary roll, the last and perhaps the most sumptuous example of its race, was decorated by an artist of remarkable talent—the name of Holbein has been suggested—but was never fully completed.4 It contains several large drawings, one of the deathbed of the abbot, where he is assisted by saints and angels as well as by his monks, another of the great hearse approaching the high altar, and yet another of Islip's chapel, showing its two stages and thus illustrating the account of the funeral refection. Of even greater interest, perhaps, is I LP, v, 327. 2 MC, III, 124-36. V. supra, p. 84. 3 The document is cited in Widmore, History of Westminster Abbey, 206—10. 4 It has been excellently edited by W. H. St J. Hope, 'The Obituary Roll of John Islip, Abbot of Westminster, 1502-32, with Notes on other English Obituary Rolls'.

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the large drawing of the abbot in his habit surrounded by flowers1 symbolizing the cardinal and theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost; with his right hand he holds the stem of the lily of piety, while with the left he breaks or * slips' that of the rose of love. All these sketches, in addition to their beauty of line and composition, show an individuality of feature and a realism of detail which never becomes grotesque. Little is known of the personal character and private life of Islip, save that they were externally blameless. As with other notable men of Church and State at that time, as with Wolsey himself, the unparalleled outward magnificence of ceremonial and building and hospitality contrasts strangely with the absence of any direct indication of the inner wealth of a creative intellect or a loveworthy personality. Islip's motto: 'Seek peace and ensue it', if understood in a material sense, might well in early Tudor times have taken a man fast and far from his sea-mark and polar star. If his funeral was the most splendid that had been accorded to any abbot of Westminster, he died at the very moment when such monastic pageantry was about to fade into thin air. The funeral of 'the last great abbot of Westminster—perhaps the greatest of his line'2 has been called, with singular aptness, 'the funeral of the Middle Ages'.3 On the day before it took place, Convocation made submission to the king with acknowledgement of his headship of the Church; on the very day of the funeral Sir Thomas More returned the Great Seal to the king. 1 The flowers are as follows: (faith) pink; (hope) pansy; (charity) rose; (prudence) marigold; (justice) borage; (temperance) daisy; (constancy) gillyflower; (fear of the Lord) columbine; (piety) lily; (counsel) violet; (fortitude) honeysuckle; (knowledge) flower-deluce; (understanding) lily of the valley; (wisdom) cornflower. 2 J. A. Robinson, art. cit. 77. It is not easy to agree with this judgment. 3 A. P. (Dean) Stanley, Memorials of Westminster Abbey> 335.

IOO

CHAPTER VIII

H U M A N I S M AT EVESHAM By a fortunate accident of survival there has come down to us from the abbey of Evesham, only fifteen miles distant from Worcester in the Vale of Avon east of the far-seen Bredon Hill, a book which opens a window upon the monastic world of the day giving a view very different from that of visitation records. This is a collection of letters written at Evesham by a monk of the house, one Robert Joseph Beecham1 or Willis. These letters, about one hundred and sixty in number, were all the work of a single hand during two, or at most three, years. Only thirty or so in the whole collection bear a date, but there are indications that the chronological order is on the whole preserved, though with a few patent disarrangements.2 In the whole series only three or four external events are mentioned,^ but by a fortunate chance they combine with the sole precise date in the whole collection4 to assign a long run of letters to the autumn of 1530, and the whole series to a date between Christmas 1528 or 1529 and Christmas, 1531. No less than sixty correspondents are addressed, but at least seventy letters, or almost half the total number, are directed to eight of the writer's friends, while forty correspondents are the recipients of but a single letter apiece. 1 The letters are in Peniarth MS. 119, fos. 604—735 in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. They were transcribed by Dom Hugh Aveling of Ampleforth Abbey to be used in an edition by Mr W. A. Pantin in a forthcoming volume of the Oxford Historical Society. I am greatly indebted to Dom Hugh and Mr Pantin for permission to use this typescript, and to the former also for allowing me to draw upon the results of his researches. For Robert Joseph's possible surname of Beechem or Beecham, v. infra, p. 104. It may be noted that the Beauchamp family lived near Alcester, where their name is perpetuated in a farmhouse Beauchamp Court. Dom Aveling, however, suggests another surname, viz. Willis, and identifies Robert Joseph with Dns Robert Willis, who became vicar of All Saints, Evesham, in March 1546 and of Cropthorne on 11 January 1559; he made his will 28 June 1569 (proved 16 July). Robert Joseph was prior studentium at Gloucester College on 17 December 1537 (Oxf. Univ. Records Reg. B (rev.), fo. 194*)2 E.g. the sequence lxv—lix was written from Ombersley during August and September, whereas lxiii to the vicar of Ombersley, recalling the visit, is dated 20 November, and the letter between (i.e. lxiv) is that which is precisely dated 30 September 1530. Similarly lxxiii is of 6 December, whereas lxxiv is of 21 September. But such demonstrable misplacements are rare and in general the order seems to be chronological. 3 lxx: 'Ingens pervolitat rumor de Tracei contestamento variis haeresium virulentiis differto.' Sir William Tracy died in 1530; he was a Gloucestershire man, buried at Toddington (dioc. Worcester), and the matter would be of interest at Evesham. lxxi (30 November): ' Plusculum novorum internos recens dispertivit fama de Cardinali illo Eboracensi episcopo.' Wolsey was arrested for treason at Cawood, near York, on 4 November 1530. lxxviii (undated): 'Quid de Cardinali Eboracensi Archiepiscopo apud vos popularis circumseminavit rumor libenter audirem ex te.' 4 lxiv: 'Die veneris festo divi Hieronimi.' September 30 fell on Friday in 1530. As regards the total period covered by the letters, iii was written shortly after Christmas; lxxx-lxxxiv date from early in January a year later; cxxx-cxxxii date from the following Christmas season. But it is possible that three (not two) years are covered, v. infra.

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IOI

The writer was a young monk of Evesham, who had studied in arts for some years at Oxford, and had returned, apparently without finishing his course, to fill the office of abbot's chaplain at Evesham, from which post he was removed in 1530 to receive the charge of educating the novices in letters.1 Most of his correspondents were monks of other black monk houses, such as Abingdon, Bury St Edmunds, Eynsham, Glastonbury, Gloucester, Pershore, Ramsey, Tavistock, Winchcombe and Worcester, but Cistercians of Combermere and Hailes, and an Austin canon of Studley, are addressed, together with several secular priests, a number of Masters and Doctors, and one or two of the writer's relatives. Almost all can be recognized on the internal evidence of the letters as being, or as having been, students at Oxford, and those most frequently addressed are clearly old companions of the writer.2 A few can be identified as persons with a small niche in the annals of the times,3 or at least as appearing in contemporary lists of their communities, and two in particular bear names familiar to all students of the period: the aged abbot of Winchcombe, Richard Kidderminster,4 and a young monk, the most admired of all the writer's friends, who was destined in the troubled years to come to be Dean of St Paul's and abbot of Queen Mary's refounded Westminster. The reader's first impression, as he makes his way through the collection, is one of resentment with a letter-writer in such a crucial time who could spill so much ink and tell us next to nothing of his world. The only references to public events occur in two or three letters close together in date, and mention the controversy over the will of Sir William Tracy or allude to the rumours of Wolsey's final disgrace.5 Nor is Robert Joseph more communicative either as to domestic happenings at Evesham, or to his own personal doings and opinions. No one familiar only with ancient or modern collections of letters would believe that a writer could use so many words to convey so little information or thought, but this will scarcely seem surprising to a medievalist, and the monk of Evesham though a humanist in language, has much of the medieval man about him. If, however, we cease to look for what we shall not find, these letters are by no means without interest or value; they are far from being (save for a few examples) mere literary exercises. Robert Joseph is not precisely the kind of young monk we should expect to find at Evesham. To begin with, he writes in an excellent, idiomatic, conversational Latin which derives its vocabulary from Plautus and Terence rather than from Cicero. His style, in fact, immediately proclaims him for what he is, a fervent 1 lix. For his previous post, v. xxv: 'sacellanus magistro meo sum ad raanum'. 2 In addition to explicit references the easy equality with which he addresses monks from other monasteries presupposes previous companionship, and in fact a dozen or more can be identified as Oxford graduates of this generation. 3 E.g. Richard Smith (lxxii, cvi, etc.) is almost certainly the volatile controversialist who crossed the fence more than once, dying at last in exile at Douai; cf. DNB. Wye (xxxiii) is probably William Way, later Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford {DNB). 4 Only one letter (clxv) is addressed to him. 5 V, supra, p. 100 n. 3.

IO2

THE TUDOR SCENE

disciple of Erasmus. References to the great humanist are frequent, and the terms used are those of warm admiration; the works of Erasmus are quoted and some of his turns of phrase are recognizable.1 Robert Joseph had indeed taken from him his ideal of a life spent in the service of letters. Further than this, however, he does not go. He has nothing of the 'modernism' of Erasmus, nothing of his violence towards theologians and obscurantists, nothing of his hostility towards the friars or of his criticism of the 'ceremonies' of the religious life. He is not in sympathy with the religious innovators and iconoclasts, and, although he is aware that an addiction to undiluted theology is apt to have a bad effect upon one's Latinity, his final advice is for a mixture of the two. He writes to his friend Ethelstan of Glastonbury: He who avoids extremes does best. While those deserve censure who pass their whole life without ever doing more than weaving incredibly subtle syllogisms, yet I would not fully acquit those who, as the phrase goes, snap their fingers at scholastic arguments and say that nothing that smacks of Scotus is worthy of attention. Slip between each extreme; you will pass safest by the middle road.2 For my part, I would handle Scotus and his followers in such a way as to take my opinions from them while borrowing a pure style from writings of a finer temper. If you do this, you will satisfy the Scotists with your skill in reasoning and please men of taste with your Attic charm of style.3 His own virtuosity is considerable. He writes easily, and is never at a loss for a word, and when the reader is driven to a dictionary it is his own ignorance of Roman comedy and lexicography, not the writer's barbarism, that stands revealed.4 Robert Joseph knows familiarly not only Plautus, Terence, Virgil, Horace and Ovid, but Juvenal, Epictetus, Theophrastus, Cato, the younger Pliny and among later writers Jerome and Lactantius; and he asks for Quintilian on rhetoric to be sent to him. Of his contemporaries, besides Erasmus, he knows Bude, Judocus Clicthove, Lily, Pace and above all the Carmelite poet Giovanni Battista Mantuano, whose Eclogues and Carmina he quotes very frequently. It was on these last, and the Eunuchus of Terence, that he proposed to nourish his novices. 5 He is also a clever versifier: his common practice was to turn an English distich or proverb into an elegiac couplet in a dozen different ways, but he is equally at home not only with hexameters, but with sapphics and asclepiads.° His Greek was apparently in a rudimentary stage, but he writes to Oxford for a Greek lexicon and other books for learners, together with the Chiliades of Erasmus.7 The accomplishment and training 1 Cf. vii, xv, xxiv, liii, lvi, lxxii, xcvi, cxxxi, cxli; especially xxiv: 'Ego omnibus Erasmum lacerantibus obici cupiam ilia Lilii [William Lily, high-master of St Paul's, ob. 1522] "Doctus ab ignavo coetu laceratur Erasmus, Attamen huic saeclo lumen Erasmus erit'V Also xcvi: 'Erasmus nostre decus etatis.' 2 Ovid, Metam. II, 137. 3 xxi. 4 E.g. words such as bolus, blatero, congerro, Grecanicus, strena. 5 lxxxii. For Mantuanus (Giovanni Battista Spagnuoli, 1448-1516), v. article in Enciclopedia Italiana. 6 Cf. lxiv, c. 7 lxxii.

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par excellence of the humanist was, he held, the frequent writing of letters, and he denounces his correspondents who write in English, and abbots who discourage their monks from correspondence: I cannot sufficiently express my astonishment at certain prelates who cling so scrupulously to the letter of the Rule of St Benedict, that they warn their subjects against the exercise of letter-writing as they might keep them from a brothel. Is not this the shortest of all ways of forbidding the whole study of literature to their monks?1 As not a single letter of his correspondents survives we cannot be sure that all of them were as fluent and correct as Robert Joseph, but the mere fact that he could address lengthy letters in idiomatic classical Latin to some sixty correspondents, some of them country priests and the majority young monks, is an impressive witness to the high level attained by the literary education of the period at Oxford. Of the personal history of the monk of Evesham we have all too little information. When the correspondence opens he has recently returned from Oxford2 and is abbot's chaplain, but after a time, when a new prior was to be appointed in place of one carried off by the pestilence, his candid criticisms of the individual who was in the event successful earned the disapproval of Abbot Lichfield, and he was sent back into the cloister to instruct the novices.3 He was naturally sympathetic when a friend had a similar misfortune,4 for the traditional attitude of Jocelin of Brakelond to the 'poor monks of the cloister* as opposed to the obedientiaries had persisted through the centuries, but his downfall seems to have been only one move in a general post at Evesham in which Clotsall the kitchener became chamberlain, Acton the chamberlain became guestmaster, Broadway the precentor fell to being kitchener, while Studley rose to the precentorship.5 To Robert Joseph, however, it was an imprisonment, and he quotes feelingly from the Scriptures of a similar experience of his namesake the patriarch, with the appeal to a successful friend to * remember Joseph'.6 A year or so later he has hopes of returning to Oxford and is found enlisting the support of the aged abbot of Winchcombe, the influential Kidderminster; whether he was successful or not does not appear, though the abrupt end to the collection of letters is followed by two short copies of verses composed at Oxford. His residence at Evesham was interrupted at least once during these years by the approach of the pestilence; the young monks were dispersed over the countryside and Robert Joseph took refuge at Ombersley, a 1 xxviii. The reference is to ch. 54 of the Rule of St Benedict. 2 Cf. v and cxxix, which would seem to give 15 28 as the year of departure. 3 lix. 4 xciv. 5 1. These names, and others such as Fladbureus, Uptonus, etc., are 'sweet symphonies' to those familiar with the district. 6 liv. The friend, 'inclitus ille praesul Politensis', is John Stonywell, last abbot of Pershore (1527—39), late suffragan bishop in York with the title in commendam of Pulati in Epirus. V. infra, p. 340.

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village north of Worcester on the road to Kidderminster, where the church and manor had long been the property of Evesham abbey. Here, in the depths of the country, only a few miles from Prior More and his aubades at Grimley, the Evesham humanist found a kindred spirit in Robert Doming the vicar, to whom he writes in after days with nostalgic memories.1 The fever, to which he had for the moment given the go-by, caught him six months later in February at Evesham itself. Abbot Lienfield, with whom he was never on cordial terms, showed a very practical solicitude for him in this crisis,2 but he was hard hit by the sickness and complained (without apparent justification) that his pen had lost its fineness and his hand its strength; he could scarcely endure the effort of writing. Worse still, the illness had been costly and had eaten up his savings.3 A few other personal glimpses are given; he begs the good offices of the prior of Alcester for his father, of the surname of Beecham, whose illness has been augmented by a bereavement;4 he commits a brother to Smith at Oxford as a sizar, and a young cousin or nephew to Taylor as an inmate of his hall.5 He sometimes tells us where he is writing: often it is in the dormitory between lauds and prime when he is sleepy; occasionally it is in the cloister, the school or the library.6 The conclusions of his letters are almost all different: 'thine beyond all flattery', * thine while life lasts', 'thine while boars haunt hills and fishes streams', 'thine while there's skin on my bones', 'thine till death's dart'. 7 His signature likewise varies: he is 'the cloisterer of Evesham', 'the cowl-wearer', 'a little Benedict', 'a cloister-walker'.8 While his affection for the generality of his correspondents seems only conventional, for one at least his admiration was undoubtedly sincere; it is an early and notable testimony to the character and personality of one who, a quarter of a century later, was to set his faith before ambition when the way stood open to Canterbury. The name of John Feckenham occurs in the very first letter: Joseph's 1 lxiii. These visitations seem to have been the plague, not the sweating sickness; cf. C. Creighton, A History of Epidemics in Britain, I, 292 seqq. 2 xci: 'Magistrum nostrum [he is writing to Feckenham] ut erga me sit animus nescio, satis tamen munifice febricitantem tractavit. Non semel enim me sua dignatus est pecunia beare.' This is a characteristically sixteenth-century interpretation of the Rule, ch. 36:' Cura maxima sit abbati ne aliquam neglegentiam patiantur [infirmi].' 3 xci: 'Febris universam devoravit pecuniam.' 4 lxxxv. He writes to the prior of Penwortham (a Lancashire cell of Evesham) who is apparently in charge of Alcester, once an abbey, but now a mere cell of Evesham. 5 xvi, cv. 6 E.g. xlix: *E somni officina sive malis e dormitoriolo nostro post peractas matutinas.' xxxviii: 'Raptim a prandio e pedagogio nostro.' xlvi: 'Ex cistula ['box', here = carreil] nostra claustrica.' clxiv: 'Ex bibliotheca.* 7 i: 'Tuus citra omnen fucum et Gnatonismum.' Gnatho is a parasite in the Eunuchus of Terence, xvii: *Tuus dum superstes fuerit.' xxviii: 'Tuus dum juga montis aper', etc. [cf. Virgil, Eclog. v, 76]. cxviii: 'Tuus dum cutis carnem texerit.' exx: 'Tuus ad mortis spicula.' One is reminded of the conclusions of Lord Fisher's letters to Winston Churchill at the Admiralty: 'Yours till hell freezes', 'Yours till charcoal sprouts', etc. 8 1: 'Eveshamius claustricola.' exxiv: *Cuculliger.' exxviii: 'Benedictiaster.' civ: * Claustrambulus'.

HUMANISM AT EVESHAM

I05

feelings towards him are such that he would love even his dog for its master's sake; he is the light of Evesham, honey-sweet to Joseph and more than half his soul.1 He is his dearest brother; he would rather be at Oxford with him than hold the richest benefice elsewhere,2 and one of the few letters where the note of piety is sounded is that in September 1530, when he writes of Feckenham's coming ordination to the priesthood.3 No correspondent receives more letters than he; yet despite this admiration the letters to Feckenham are on the whole disappointing; they are usually short, and tell us nothing of the addressee. Equally favoured as a correspondent is John Neot of Glastonbury, but here there is more of equality; indeed, Robert Joseph is almost his mentor. Neot had other interests besides books. He would spend a whole afternoon on the bowling-green or with rod and line by Isis and Cherwell, or simply calling on friends for a drink, and his Joseph half humours his fancy. He writes to him on a spring morning when April was tossing bounty to the cherries in the Vale of Evesham : See, the air is mild, and the breeze light from the west; the thickets ring with bird-song, and are merry with the sight and scent of blossom. Up, then! Drop Scotus, take up your bowls and be off to the green; you will bring back a bushel of health as well as a sixpence or two. If you don't feel like bowls, go fishing.4 The Evesham monk rarely touches on religious topics. His relations with his abbot, to whom he always alludes by a current convention as his 'Master', were distant, and he more than once expresses a wish that his behaviour might accord with his name.5 When he is condoling with a Gloucester monk who has lost office he joins to the Psalmist's reassurance that he has never seen the just man abandoned the Virgilian anticipation of pleasant memories of past hard times.6 Perhaps the deepest note he strikes is a reverence for the priestly office, never held so low as in his own day.7 He writes to his friend the vicar of Ombersley of the high position that a cure of souls gives;8 more unexpectedly, but certainly sincerely, he writes to a Cistercian friend of a boy who had chosen the life of a secular priest rather than that of a monk: 'I am sure his character will be an 1 i: * Vel catulum non possim non diligere quern diligit ille.' clviii: * Ilium domus nostre lucernulam, Josephi mel merum et animae plusquam dimidium Fecknamum/ 2 cix: 'Mallem tecum Oxonicolam esse quam vel pinguissimum munus possidere.' 3 lxxiv. This letter would seem to be of 21 September 1530, and would thus show Feckenham's date of birth to have been c. 1505—8, or some seven to ten years earlier than the approximate date usually given. 4 ex. Spheristerium, though often a tennis-court, here seems to have its more common meaning of bowling-green. Bowls were a monastic sport, and the phrases spherarumjaculatio and globulis mittendis suggest bowls rather than tennis. John Neot took his B.D. in 1535, and was still at Glastonbury in 1538—9 (cf. A. Watkin,' Glastonbury, 1538-9', 450). Cf. also infra, p. 347. 5 lix: 'Plane videatur sui proprii nominis [sc. Clemens] oblitus.' 6 xciv; cf. Virgil, Aeneid, vi, 203, 207. 7 lxxiv (to Feckenham on his ordination):' Magna dignitas sacerdotium, verum nunquam ita ut nostris temporibus pedibus conculcatum proque vili habitum.' 8 lxxvi.

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example to the country folk, and to my mind there is no life more truly calm than that of a secular priest provided that he is chaste, devout and well-educated.'1 Towards the end of the series there is a glimpse of an interesting correspondent, one William Dalam, a canon of Studley priory, some fifteen miles north of Evesham between the forests of Feckenham and Arden. Dalam was an outspoken man; he had visited Evesham and had later criticized the lavish table of the monks.2 Joseph objects that he was given a hospitable reception, and now finds fault with his hosts; surely the most meritorious form of self-control is that exercised in the midst of plenty. Dalam was not to be repressed, and proceeded to complain of the intolerable garrulity of Robert Joseph and his friend, the schoolmaster of Evesham. Letters upon letters, he says: one is knocked down and buried under them.3 If all Joseph's letters have survived from the period, Dalam's complaints seem excessive; as for Evesham, it was in fact passing through a phase of real prosperity, which was doubdess reflected in its living, but it is interesting to find an Austin canon of a minor house, only a few years before the end, commenting adversely upon black monk extravagance. Occasionally Robert Joseph gives us glimpses of contemporary life, not devoid of a trace of humour. The letters, we gather, were carried by a variety of agents: there was Galatea, a maiden of sixty, a beauty white as the mythical raven;4 there was a fishmonger, whose beat took him to Evesham and Combermere in Cheshire ;5 there was a drunken rascal who put Joseph's letter deep in his wallet, where the sun could not burn it by day, nor the moon by night,6 until it was found on his return to Evesham and his senses many days later. Taken altogether, our debt to Robert Joseph is less for what he tells us directly than for what impressions his letters as a whole convey. He and his friends have no fear for the morrow; they have not a glimmer of foreboding that within four or five years they will be taking the Oath of Supremacy, and four years after that surrendering their abbeys.? They feel no urgency to be defending the faith or reforming themselves. The picture is of a life still following the immemorial pattern of the past. Yet in one way the pattern has altered. The monks have caught the new humanism; they write of books and events in the new idiom which is half-way between 1 clxi: * Nee video qui tranquilliorem degent vitam his sacrificis qui appellantur saeculares, modo caste, sancte et humaniter mores componant/ 2 cl: 'Exuberantia ciborum et potorum.' Dalam is an unfamiliar name, but the bearer appears (with the same spelling) as subprior on the list of those who took the Oath of Supremacy {Deputy Keeper's Reports, VII (1846), 301). 3 cl-clii. 4 xxvii: 'Galathea quaepiam, puella annorum fere sexaginta, pulchra valde, nee corvi albedini cedens.' For the raven's original whiteness, v. Ovid, Metam, 11, 541 seqq. 5 lix: 'Volitans piscivendulus.' 6 lxx: 'Ita marsupio immersas epistolas.. .lit nee per diem sol ustulavit eas neque luna per noctem.' Cf. Ps. cxx. 6 (Vulgate). 7 The lists of signatories from Evesham to the oath and the deed of surrender appear not to have survived, but many of the correspondents from other houses can be traced.

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that of Matthew Paris and our own. They are not the bucolic, earthbound creatures that visitation records suggest; Robert Joseph's correspondents at Hailes and Winchcombe are not merely the sour, disgruntled, talebearing monks of Cromwell's letters, nor would Robert Joseph have become a comfortable squire like Prior More. They are rather of the family of Longland and Tunstall. Yet we must not exaggerate their learning. They have the foundation of classical letters, but they are not scholars or learned in the sense that Erasmus and Bude and Melanchthon are learned. What they and their likes would have become had they been granted peace in their time can only be guessed, but we know what became of Feckenham, and another of Joseph's correspondents, Richard Smith, became successively Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford and Chancellor of Douai University. All that we can say with certainty is that these letters show that a culture, a mental agility, a love of letters existed in some, at least, of the houses of all the orders on the eve of the great upheaval. It is not unpleasing to think that at Winchcombe and Evesham, whence, almost five hundred years earlier, monks had gone to revive the ancient glories of the north, there was, even at the end, a stirring of life, and that Abbot Kidderminster may have had a decisive influence upon the formation of Feckenham, the last black monk of the old order to win a place in the history of his country and in the esteem of his countrymen. Note The Evesham letters have now been published as The Letter Book of Robert Joseph, edited by H. Aveling and W. A. Pantin (Oxford Historical Society, new ser.vol. xix,i967 for 1964). The numbering in the notes has not been adapted to the printed text, which follows the same order but after a time runs first one and then two digits ahead of the typescript from which my numbers were taken, e.g. letter lxx = 7i and letter clxi= 163.

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CHAPTER IX

WILLIAM MORE, PRIOR OF WORCESTER, 1518-36 Several times in the course of this history of the monastic order in England an individual has been taken as the representative of his age. In earlier centuries reasons for the choice of this man rather than another were found in some quality of eminence that he possessed, whether holiness of life, intellectual or practical ability, or a combination of these qualities. Lanfranc, Ailred of Rievaulx, Hugh of Witham, Henry of Eastry, Uthred of Boldon and Thomas de la Mare were all men who, in one way or another, stood out among their contemporaries. For the last phase of the monastic life before the Dissolution an individual presents himself who, though holding for long the headship of an important house, cannot properly be described as eminent or distinguished either in mind or in character or in achievement. His inclusion in a gallery of portraits is due primarily to the aptness with which his career at all points illustrates the trend of the age; it is due also to the copious material from which the course of that career can be traced.1 William Peers, who on entering religion took the surname of More from the hamlet near Tenbury that had been his home,2 was born in 1471 1 The principal source is the Journal ofPrior William More, edited for the Worcestershire Historical Society in 1914 by Miss E. S. Fegan. The editor, with a diffidence which we may regret, disclaimed any qualifications for introducing or annotating the text, and the editorial matter is in fact very scanty. This is unfortunate, as the Journal is a mine of information on economic, social and linguistic matters, which might well have afforded scope for wide and valuable comment. The indices also are very inadequate, partly because a somewhat unusual general rule was adopted of noting only the first occurrence of persons and subjects. Fortunately, the editor was not always consistent in her application of this, but it remains true that die reader or student can never be certain from the index that he is relieved of the task of searching the whole volume for a word or name which he failed to make a note of; he will also find that a number of other idiosyncrasies render the indices less useful than they appear. The reader would also have been gready helped if the current year and quarter had been indicated on each page. The only writer to make copious extracts from the Journal while it was still unprinted was the gifted Worcester antiquary John Noake, who in his still valuable Monastery and Cathedral of Worcester devoted a long chapter to More, giving an admirable selection of short passages illustrating the prior's activities. Miss Fegan's remark (p. vii) that he ' overlooked very little' is, however, somewhat too emphatic, for the economic and monastic historian will find many details which did not, and could not have been expected to, interest Noake almost a century ago; in addition, some misstatements and omissions show that his knowledge of the Journal was not perfect. In addition to the Journal a very large number of account rolls of the priory survive from the early sixteenth century. A number of these have been printed in The Almoner's Book of the Priory of Worcester, ed. by J. H. Bloom, and in Accounts of the Priory of Worcester, 1531-2, ed. by J. M. Wilson, together with A catalogue of the Rolls of the Obedientiaries, ed. J. H. Bloom and S. G. Hamilton. 2 More nowhere indicates his native place, but le More was a manor of the priory in the parish of Lindridge near Tenbury. It is now a farmhouse in a countryside of small villages

WILLIAM MORE, PRIOR OF WORCESTER, 1518-36

I09

or 1472 and was shaven and clothed with the monastic habit in St Mary's cathedral priory in 1488. He became kitchener in 1501 and later subprior under John Wednesbury.1 When the latter died in 1518 he was elected prior with the approval of Richard Foxe, bishop of Winchester and at that time still a person of influence.2 Thenceforward for some seventeen years he kept, or rather caused to be written up for him, a day-book in which were entered in detail his receipts and expenses throughout the year. It is thus possible to follow his movements and activities week by week, to note his tastes and interests, and so to form an impression of his personality and worth.3 His Journal is unique of its kind, as being the only record known to survive of the daily expenditure of the head of a house in the sixteenth century, but its uniqueness is purely accidental and due to its chance survival; its form has in it nothing remarkable. Every obedientiary, every bailiff of a manor, and thus every head of a house, kept a journal of expenses and receipts to serve as a basis for the figures presented to chapter at the annual audit. It is, however, fortunate that the one surviving example of such a journal kept by the head of a house should cover a long period which happens also to include the supreme crisis of the monastic life in England, and that its author should be one whose career, especially in its later stages, can be followed in other sources. Nevertheless, too much must not be demanded from the Journal. An account book, even if detailed and absolutely complete, is like a visitation record; it contains only facts of a certain kind and reveals only certain aspects of life; it is very far from presenting a complete and accurately focused picture. The prior does not note events of national interest save by accident; there is no intimate self-revelation or criticism of others. The coronation of Anne Boleyn and the birth of the Princess Elizabeth are noted because on each occasion a gratuity was given to the royal messenger (VCHy fForcSy in, 442-3). The prior stayed there more than once, and I received the impression that it was his name-place—an impression shared, as I afterwards found, by Noake, op. cit. 134. More was there for over six weeks in the summer of 1521, and it is perhaps significant that his departure coincided with the death and funeral of his mother {Journal, 137-40). Mrs Peers had been living near her son at Grimley, but she may have returned to le More for care in her last illness. 1 Journal, introd. i and p. 3; Accounts of the Priory oj Worcester^ xvi. 2 LP, ix, 656. 3 The Journal runs from October 1518, shortly after the prior's entry into office, to within a week of midsummer, 1535. About six weeks are missing in spring, 1535, and leaves have been cut out at the end which may have contained a month or two more. According to the editor, the Journal is in three hands, one of which may (possibly, but in her opinion not probably) be that of More himself. The Journal contains many notes of payments to scriveners for various purposes and at least one (p. 80) ' to Richard skryvenar for writing my JornalF, but this and several other occasions where the first person is used (e.g. 'I gyff') need mean no more than that the scribe is copying More's notes. Miss Fegan also prints (pp. 416—25) valuable extracts from a companion volume (probably the 'new Jornall' to which the prior refers more than once) which contains inventories of Crowle, Grimley and Battenhall in 1532, together with accounts of work done and payments made on these and other objects; this was certainly written by 'John skryvenar' (p. 404).

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who brought the news; the fall of Wolsey, the submission of the clergy, the imprisonment of Sir Thomas More and the taking of the oath of Succession receive no mention. Prior More's Journal is only one of a very rich collection of compotus rolls of all the obedientiaries of the cathedral priory. For some years, indeed, the set is absolutely complete, and we can study the full presentation of the accounts of the house as they passed through the annual audit. One such set, containing the prior's rolls, has been printed. It covers the financial year running from Michaelmas 1521 to Michaelmas 1522. With this, and the receipts and expenses for the year given in the Journal, it might be thought that we should possess a clear picture of the prior's financial position. A few moments' inspection, however, will show that this is not the case, and it is well to draw attention to this at the outset, lest a reader of these pages, or of the Journal itself, may think the picture he obtains is more complete and accurate than in fact it is. Indeed, these accounts, in common with almost all accounts, modern as well as medieval, present an appearance of completeness and simplicity that is illusory. When they are examined more closely, discrepancies (or what seem to be such) appear at every point. The chief cause of the great difference between the Journal and the rolls is, however, easily discoverable. While the expenses in the Journal are real outgoings, the sums debited against income in the rolls are a piece of book-keeping. At cathedral priories the income of the superior had never been charged, as at most abbeys, to sources entirely separate from the revenues of the convent, and though in practice certain of the Worcester revenues were by custom earmarked for the prior, strictly speaking all were the property of the prior and convent together. The prior, therefore, infinancialtheory, was not supported by the revenues of the property which was by custom assigned to his support, but by a number of annual grants made for specific purposes. It is these grants which, at the annual account, are debited against the sources of income. Of these grants, some are real: thus there is a grant for household expenses and another for what might now be called petty cash which seem to correspond fairly closely with the actual expenses for those purposes recorded in the Journal, but other grants, such as those for clothing for the prior and his servants, are clearly notional and are not reflected in the Journal. Whether money was actually paid, and then used at the prior's discretion for any purpose he might wish, or whether clothes were issued without money changing hands, is not clear from the rolls. Furthermore, a careful study of the Journal reveals that important expenses find no place there. Thus the travelling and lodging costs for the prior's regular and lengthy visits to London do not figure in the Journal, though purchases and gratuities in London do so appear, and a number of important normal 1 A 'letter concernyng the coronacon' is noted in the first week of May 1533 (p. 367). About 14 September of the same year a note occurs (p. 373) of the birth of a 'princes. . . whose name is Elizabeth*.

WILLIAM MORE, PRIOR OF WORCESTER, 1518-36

III

expenses appear so rarely that it is likely, if not certain, that they must often have been met without leaving record. These observations, though seemingly technical, are in fact necessary to a complete understanding of the Journal, for they all tend to show that the prior did in fact receive and dispose of considerable sums for which no record exists, while remaining within the framework of an annual system of accounts in which the balance was struck, not between income received and cash spent, but between sources of revenue and a number of grants and allowances. On this reckoning, it would seem that Prior More as a rule broke even, and indeed a complete view of the Journal suggests that he was a tolerably good man of business and that there were no large losses to the house through incompetence or prodigality. The real criticism that a reformer, whether economist or monk, might make would rather take the form of questioning the need, in the circumstances of the age, for the head of a monastery to live in such a way that an income equivalent to a quarter of the revenue of the house was needed to maintain him, together with a large following of servants, and to equip with all domestic furnishings and amenities three or four large manor houses. For the Journal makes it abundantly clear that during the years of his priorate William More spent comparatively little time at the cathedral priory. Though the need to supervise great estates and to live off their produce had long ago vanished with the change from an economy of exploitation to one of rents, the external pattern of the prior's life is almost identical with that of the peregrinating abbots and priors of an earlier age, with that of Abbot Wenlock of Westminster or Prior Darlington of Durham. Though More had commodious lodgings in the priory, with all facilities for hospitality, he spent the greater part of the year on his manors, no longer devising and executing an agricultural policy, but living the life of a country squire in relatively long spells of residence at three or four manor houses, which priors of the past had selected as places to be kept when other manors had been leased with hall and demesne. Thus in the accounting year 1527-81 More spent only nine weeks at the priory, which he visited for some of the greater liturgical seasons of the year, such as Christmas, Quinquagesima, Easter, the Rogations and Whitsuntide; of the forty-three weeks that remained nineteen were spent at Battenhall, a manor only a mile from the cathedral, nine at Crowle, four miles to the north-east of the city, and fifteen at Grimley, four miles to the north in the valley of the Severn.2 This was one of the few years in which fell no visit to London, which often took up fiom four to six weeks. The pattern of 1 Journal^ 254—79. Henceforward all figures, unless otherwise noted, refer to pages in this book." 2 For descriptions of Battenhall, Crowley and Grimley a hundred years ago, v. Noake, op. cit. 155—6, 62—3. The manor house at Crowle was still standing when Noake was first making his observations. More also stayed once for some weeks at Corting (189-90, the year being 1524) and he spent odd nights at one or two other manors.

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the year 1532-3* was much the same: eleven weeks at Worcester, fourteen at Grimley, twelve at Battenhall, ten at Crowle, two in London, and the remaining three broken with journeys to town or between one manor and another. As the estates at Worcester, which had always been a cathedral priory, were not divided between prior and convent, the manors not specifically appropriated to one of the obedientiaries were administered by the cellarer. In the early sixteenth century there were some twenty-seven under his control, and of these some fifteen had come to be regarded as furnishing the income of the prior;2 the major part of their rents therefore passed directly into his hands. With the exploitation of such parts of these manors as remained unleased he would seem to have had no concern; that was the cellarer's business. The tools and gear and labour for which More pays are those devoted directly to constructions and repairs at the manor houses, and to the maintenance of sluices, floodgates, moats, fishponds, parks and warrens. As only rents and dues are recorded among the receipts, with no mention whatever of sales of stock or grain or dairy produce, and as on the other hand his accounts include each week 'expenses on howsolde' without particulars, it is not possible to say how far his manors supplied grain, vegetables, milk and cheese, and whether the cost, whatever it may have been, was debited to the cellarer or never appeared at all upon the books. All that can be said is that the prior's visible expenses on provisions are for wine and 'spices' only, with an occasional 'byff' when a great company assembles. Prior More, in his early years in office, spent considerable sums upon setting his houses, especially those at Crowle and Grimley, in good order. He tackled Crowle, which he found 'in decay', in his very first year, and in that and the year following he spent upwards of £34 on carpentry work alone; this, in that country of half-timber houses, would account for by far the larger part of the cost of a new fabric. In the next few years most of his attention was given to Grimley, where the fabric was fairly sound, and where he was consequently able to attend to furnishings, decorations and fitting up the chapel, of which the altar was consecrated shortly after Easter in 1523 by the bishop of Ascalon.3 By this time More had returned to finish Crowle, and in the years 1524 and 1525 the house and chapel were glazed from top to bottom, large quantities of glass being brought down from London and fitted by 'Edmund glasyer of Alceter'.4 A further large 1 357-752 The manors can be traced in More's receipts (15 ff.). For the distribution of the receipts of the manor of Bradwas between the prior and others, v. Accounts, 42-5. 3 The bishop, Ralph Heylesdon, was acting for the absentee Geronimo Ghinucci. He had 6s. 8
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undertaking was the hanging of all the living rooms with painted cloth or serge. This was bought in bulk undecorated and then painted in situ. Entries such as the following are frequent: 'Item to thomas Kynge peynter for peynting the borders in the grene chambur conteynyng xxxiii yeards price the yeard peynting i d ' . 1 From Crowle the work passed to Battenhall, which was glazed on the grand scale in the last weeks of 1524 by 'cornesshe colsull'.2 Finally, when the rooms had windows and hangings, furnishings and upholstery came pouring in, with beds, tables, bedspreads, cushions, sheets and table napery.3 When the prior had finished, Crowle and Grimley and Battenhall, as their inventories show, were comfortable and well appointed houses by any standards which exclude the amenities of modern plumbing and what are called the public utility services. Prior More, as we have seen, lived on a substantial and secure income paid at regular intervals either by the tenant in person, or through bailiffs and rent-reeves, or by one of his own monastic officials. He carried with him a retinue of some size: four gentlemen, ten yeomen and ten grooms, in addition to a chaplain and monk-steward,4 and he maintained in addition the numerous indoor and outdoor servants that encumbered every large house of the age. He had no agrarian problems to exercise him; his unavoidable expenses consisted primarily in finding wages and maintenance for his household, and his only cares were for the three or four available sources of what may be called the 'heavy' provisions—the deer park, the fish stew, the rabbit warren and the dovecot. For each of these we have details over a long course of years. Not only are we given the numbers of deer, rabbits and pigeons delivered yearly from the manors, but we can watch the expenses of fencing, ditching, hunting and snaring. Of the fish-stews in particular a very full account is given. The ponds and moats of Crowle and Grimley and Battenhall were clearly a personal interest, almost a hobby, of the prior. What with nets and weirs and floodgates, with clearances of sedge and slime, with renewals and selections of fish, they took up a considerable amount of his time and money. Each spring, at the end of March or in early April, when Lent was nearly past, builder Prior Wednesbury. These were ' gules, on a fesse sable, between three strawberry branches slipped, with berries proper, as many birds close, or*. This device might certainly seem to have a canting reference to Wednesbury's name, and were probably newly granted. More likewise purchased a coat for himself in 1520 (119): 'payd to ij herrawds of Armes of the kyngs for Armes. . . £ 4 . ' Grimley was duly adorned (266): * Item for xii skochions of my Armes to a glasear of abbots bromley, 8 s. 4d.' So apparently was Crowle, v. Noake, 206. 1 216; cf. 84.

2 219, 222.

3 CL inventories, 416. More seems to have had a liking for comfortable bedding. In thefirstfortnight of his rule he bought:' iij fetherbedd with iij bowsters v peyer of blanckettes viii Coverletts ij Grete Coveryngs viiipeyer of Shetes iij mattres iiij pyllowes of Down. . . vi quysshoons' (73). 4 The numbers in the text are as given by Musard, not a very reliable witness, in January 1536 (Z.P, x, 216). It is not easy to ascertain from the Journal (e.g. 72) what were the numbers in 1519. The chaplain receives only incidental mention in the Journal (e.g. 99). 'Dan Roger bewdeley my steward' occurs in 1529 (301, 309).

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THE TUDOR SCENE

the ponds were drained and the fish counted before restocking took place, usually with fish bought elsewhere.1 The moat at Crowle, in particular, with a surface width of forty feet narrowing to thirty at the bottom * from under the bruge to the formust tornell ayenst the pyggion hows' was one of the achievements of his period of office.2 Worcestershire is to this day a country of moated farms and manors, where the shallow pools, overhung by branches of pear or cherry, are stirred only by the moorhen or the birds of the farmyard. In the century following More's death the placid girdle of water was often to save from surprise and capture both recusant and royalist; in his more peaceful day it was regarded only as the home of tench and bream and eels. When Grimley mere was drained in 1527 there were found to have survived Lent seventeen great tench, fifty-eight store tench, seven chub, a multitude of roach, two great eels, and many small eels and pike.3 In the Low Week of 1532 forty-three tench, two carp, four perch and three hundred roach were put into Hallow pond; forty tench and a great number of roach and perch into the nether pond there; thirty-eight bream and twenty tench into the moat at Crowle; eighteen small pike into Ashenshall and Whitnell pools.4 Each expanse of water carried also its swans, and every May the prior noted their increase: 'Md. that the Eyght day of may the Eyre of Swannes withyn the mott at batnall did ley ix eggs & v of them wer Addle and iiii of the eggs wer Signetts this yere. Item the Swannes in the poole at Grymley did ley vii eggs iiij beyng addyll iij of them wer signets/5 There is no indication that the prior himself hunted or entertained his friends with the sport. He kept a huntsman, however, who was the regular recipient of a small present on Christmas Day, and for whom on one occasion he purchased 'a grete home' for 3^. 4
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1

hulls', but this was a non-recurrent expense, as was also, somewhat unexpectedly, a sum given to Mrs James Badger 'for my kennells howndes'.2 For other forms of hunting desultory payments occur: in 1529 Mr William Skull is rewarded for 'hunting the otters'; three years later Mr Badger is employed.3 Foxes and cats were snared promiscuously by Harry Mownforde in 1519, and a casual reference to a 'foxe-net' in 1523 shows that this must have been a constant need.4 'John the taker of moldewarts at Grymley' does not appear before or after 1528, but he was an expert, for in that year a second payment is recorded to 'John the moldyer taker for takyng molls at batnall parked Similarly, nothing is heard of measures against another pest till William Broke in 1532 opens a campaign against 'rokes, crowes and cheowes', for which he is paid twopence a dozen over a series of weeks.6 More, indeed, when out on his manors of Crowle and Grimley, sinks deep into the landscape, and the whole cycle of village life passes before us: When Tom came home from labour, And Cisse to milking rose. It is in 1527 that the first payment (is. 4^.) occurs 'to the maydens at grymley for syngyng on maye day'; this became an annual expense: thus in 1528, 'on may day to maydens at grymley, 16d', and in 1531, 'rewards to them that singeth on maye mornyng men and women at grymley, 3 s.'7 The prior in these years was at Grimley in person, but he did not escape subscriptions to vocalists elsewhere; thus in 1528 we find a shilling given 'to syngers on may day at Worcester', and eightpence 'to the maydens box at Crowle'.8 Crowle, indeed, a village not primarily associated with music in the mind of a Worcestershire man of to-day, had a turn for song in early Tudor years. In 1532 a reward of 16 d. goes 'to the yong men of crowle for syngyng on maii day in the morenyng', while in the same week we read: 'to the maydens of crowle for syngyng on holyrowde day [3 May] in the morenyng towards our lady light, 20 d., and to other syngers I2d.'9 In 1533 the maidens have replaced the young men on May Day, and in 1534 the usual 16d. goes 'to vi mayds at crowle that did syng in the morenyng on seynt philip & Jacob day (1 May)'.10 At Worcester, however, male voices predominate; thus in 1533 a shilling goes at Battenhall' to John Acton, William parker & John tylar for syngyng on 1 283. 2 395. 3 296,353. 4 80: 'Rewarded to harry mownford as concernyng the foxes.. .for takyng of foxes & catts.' Cf. 377. 5 289, 293. The editor indexes 'moldewart' under 'molewort', giving the meaning as 'arabis or wall cress', but hazarding the remark that 'here it seems to have some connection with moles'. At my childhood's home on the Worcestershire-Warwickshire border moles were always known as 'moldi warps' to the gardener. Cf. OED, s.v. 'mouldwarp' and its innumerable variants. 6 368-70. 7 247, 327. 8 270. 'Box' here and often in the Journal is clearly a collecting-box; the term is the equivalent of our 'collection' or 'subscription'; cf. 'Christmas box'. 9 348. 10 386.

Il6

THE TUDOR SCENE

maii morenyng' and in the same week i6d. 'to iiii of worceter singyng men for the same syngyng'.1 Another occasion celebrated with early morning song was the dedication of the priory church, which fell often in Whit week. Thus in 1528 there were 'iiii syngers on our dedicacion day in the morenyng', and in 1531 something of a festival with i6d. 'to the singers of the town on our dedicacion day in the morenyng', a shilling 'to mynstrells on our dedicacion day', and 2od.' to dauncers of the parasshe'.2 April, May and June, with their early sunshine and long evenings, were the season for every kind of entertainment. There were the ' iiii syngyng men craftsmen of Worceter upon seynt georges day in the morenyng at crowle'; the' dauncers of seynt sewthans' in Ascension week, and a whole series of parish 'shows'—'Seynt Sewthans', 'the box of seynt Andres sheowe on the dedicacion day', 'the box at the showe of sent peturs' and a number of shillings 'to other boxes'.3 Many of the entertainments were organized for the benefit of the church; thus the parishioners of Grimley on one occasion prepared for Whitsuntide with a 'churche Ale and a pley*, towards which More subscribed the large sum of js. 6d.* Another year saw the same amount given 'to the church Ale at kyngs Norton', while in 1530, when More was at his native village, 4s. 6d. went to 'costs & expenses at pensax church Ale' and 2s. ^d. 'to pleyers at the more on the Assencion day to the uce of a churche'.5 Bottom and his fellows were active about midsummer in every village; in 1519 the last week in June saw 'rewards to Robin Whod and hys men for getheryng to tewksbury bruge'; ten years later it was 'certen yong men of seynt Elyns that pleyd Robyn Whod' in May; in 1530, in the week after Trinity Sunday, 'the Dauncers of claynes' received lod. and a shilling went to 'the box of Robyn hood'; in 1531 6s. Sd. went as late as 26 July 'to the tenants of clyve, pleying with Robyn Whot, mayde marion & other', and in May 1535, entertainment is provided by 'Robyn Whod and little John of Ombresley'.6 The climax of the village season came early in July. In 1533 More notes the gift of a noble 'in rewards to alhalland church at the pley holden at hynwycke hall seynt Thomas yeve beyng sonday and on seynt Thomas day beyng monday, which pley was kept to the profett of alhaland churche'.7 The characteristic event of St Thomas's Day (6 July) was not, however, a play; in 1524 a shilling goes to wine 'at the bonfire at crowle on seynt thomas yeven'. In later years more details are given; thus in 1529 the prior records that he 'spende at the boonfyre at the crosse in crowle on seynt Thomas nyght amonge the hole neypurs of the seid towne iii pens in kakes, a potell and a quarte of red wyne and a potell of sacke*. A similar celebration took place at Grimley; thus in 1529 a 1 367. 2 272, 329. 3 385, 329, 387, 327. 4 3085 371, 308. 6 87, 293, 309, 332, 405. V. E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, 1, 174 seqq.; 11, 337-97 37O.

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shilling goes 'for a potell of secke & a potell of redwyne for the bonfyre*. No details, however, are given of the refreshments provided by the much larger sums distributed 'to the wyffes of more and Newenham, of burraston and of Pensax, to make mery amongs them'.1 The winter solstice, and the ten days between Christmas and the Epiphany, were another season of amusement. More's first Christmas as prior is marked by a series of entries: ' rewarded to a harper of the Dowke of bokyngham, 12 d.; rewarded to syngers of carralls at cristmas day at nyght, i6d.; rewarded for carralls, 4d., 4d., 2d., id., 2d., 2d.; rewarded to iiii pleyers a pon the Epiphani Day belonging to sir Edward beltenop, 3 s. 4 c!.; in rewards to pleyers children, i2d.' 2 The pattern of the festivities included one or more dinners to the corporation of Worcester. Thus during Christmas in 1520-1 we find: 'for wyne to dyner on cristmas Day 1 quarte of mawmesey, 3 d. To brawne for the balyffs at nyght in the grete hall; ii dosen of wafurnes. A potell of osey & a potell of rumney, i2d.' The dinner was accompanied by 'carrolds' and rewards were given 'to William the Lewter for his syngyng & pleying in the cristamas wycke'. Another dinner followed a week later: 'rewarded to iiii pleyers of glowceter a pon sonday when the balyfTs and the xxiiii dyned with me in the grete hall, 3 s. 4d.' 3 On New Year's Day 1525 a touch of colour is given: 'At Worceter the balis & all skarlet gownes dyned with me.'4 In More's last year, the Christmas of 1534-5, further invitations were issued:' the bayliffs & ther wyffs & other of the citie with ther wyffs xviii dyned with me sonday seynt Johns day. £ 3 . 3 s. 11 d., ultra byff 12 s.' The entry does not state what entertainment was provided, but we note: 'to mynstrells Innocents day [28 December] and a popet pleyer 2s. od., to singers of carrowls, 8d., to iiii pleyers on Innocents day 2 s. 8d.'5 On occasion the city fathers had to be satisfied with less severe amusements; 'rewards to ii childurn that tumbled before me & the balyffs & others, I2d.'6

In addition to his subscriptions to the amateur theatricals of Crowle and Grimley, More found himself also patron of the professionals, strolling players and instrumentalists and conjurors of the king or queen, or of a magnate of Church or State. It might be * the mynstrells of my lord of Shrewsbury', the 'kyngs Jugeler and his blynd harper William More', who was to be in trouble ten years later, or maybe 'the kings pleyers John slye and his company* or 'William slye and his company beyng the queen's pleyers'.7 'The kyngs Jogellar, Thomas brandon' was a frequent visitor both at Worcester and Grimley; his 'chylde* earns 8
Il8

THE TUDOR SCENE

Suffolke's trumpeturs'; in lieu of a circus the prior could command 'the kyngs bereward at batnall havyng ii beres there'. 1 When alone he had his fool, Roger Knight, whom he had seemingly inherited from his predecessor and for whom, alone of all his following, he makes individual purchases of clothes, including motley, and for whose laundry also he regularly pays. These expenses cease in 1524, when Roger may have died, and there is no indication that a successor was found.2 Of the prior's own recreations there is only one hint, the purchase in the summer of 1520 of 'ix bulls [bowls] to bull with all, 8 d \ We may note with interest a later entry: * Item for a bagge pype, 2 s. 8 d.'3 More, like Abbot Wenlock and many another prelate, came from a family of middling circumstances in the countryside, and, again like Wenlock and many another son who had risen to a position of influence and wealth in the church, he maintained an affectionate and generous contact with his relatives. In his first years of office his parents came to live at Grimley and received many marks of attention; thus in 1519 we find ' to my mother 3 s. 4d. ayenst Easter', and the same sum * rewarded to my father & mother a yenst cristmas'. Indeed, a gift 'before I went to London', suggests that his parents were in some way dependent upon him, as does another entry ' payd to sir William chylde for 40 bus. of whete for my father's rent, 70s.' 4 This note is followed almost immediately by a whole series of purchases of material and payment for labour 'at my father's house at grymley'.S Clearly this was a new and substantial building, with a thatched roof, but Richard Peers did not live to see the house-warming. He must in any case have been well stricken in years and he died suddenly towards the end of February 1520. When he was buried on the 20th at Grimley the little place could seldom have seen a costlier funeral: what with candles and Masses and breakfast for the monks at Worcester and sundry other provisions the obsequies brought a bill of more than ;£9«6 This however, was exceeded when Mrs Peers died. The funeral was celebrated at Grimley manor by the black and grey friars of Worcester, in addition to a dirge at the cathedral, and Anne Peers was laid to rest in the chancel of the parish church at a cost of £10. 10 sJ His father and mother were by no means the only beneficiaries of the prior's easy circumstances. His brother Robert was apparently a wine and general merchant of Bristol, and received the custom, by no means negligible, of More's household; he was the recipient on one occasion of ' a gowne cloth' costing 20 s., but it can scarcely have been he who benefited from the gift of 'a tonne of wynne to my brother costing £ 5 ' , though his 1 296, 269, 373,288. 2 For motley and the laundress, 'mawte catur' [=Maud Caterer], v. 83, 121; for 'a pety coote & a peyer of socks to Roger knyght', v. 118. Roger clearly intrigued Miss Fegan, who indexed all his appearances. He vanishes like Lear's Fool after a broken entry recording the issue of 'a New sewte* in Lent 1523/4 (187). 3 155, 354. 4 83, 97, 101, 121. 5 121 ff. 6 127. 7 140.

WILLIAM MORE, PRIOR OF WORCESTER, 1518-36

II9

wife is doubtless indicated by the ' rewards to my syster law of Bristowe when she was here'. 1 Other members of the family occur, and receive gifts: 'my sister Ales and her children', 'my sister of cropthorne', 'myne awnte of Astley', 'Thomas martley my unkell', 'Agnes [or Anne] my cosen', ' Annes purser of London summe tymes peers'. On occasion the reference is more general, as ' gyff to certen of my kynsfolke of oxfordshire' when on the way to London, or simply 'rewards to dyvers of my por kynsfolke'. Most of these relations disappear as the years pass, but cousin Anne continues to the end to live in one of the houses controlled by the cellarer, and to do household needlework for More, who pays her rent.2 His largesse extended far beyond the family circle, especially on the occasion of a wedding. Often the bride can be identified as the daughter of a servant. Thus in a single week of 1522 occur 'rewards to master croft's dowgter lawe at her wedyng, 6s. 8d.', and 'rewards to thomas astones dowghthers wedyng, 20 d.' If' Thomas bolt that maryd my cosyn' was duly requited with 20 J., a reward of no less than £ 3 went to 'Jone tomes, thomas the panders dowghter, who was maryde to WilliamTommes draper on seynt Cecilie day the virgyn'. 3 Occasionally servants were sent to represent their master, as ' to six of my servants ryding to Alice foster wedyng, 6s. 8d.', and 'to Anne pritchett wedyng to Hervington and for costs of my servants ther, 15 s.' The most vivid picture of all is on one of the last pages of the Journal: ' Md. that Jone, John herford Dowgter of the more [perhaps an old family friend] was maryde to Robert Wodward of ynckebarowe on seynt Emerencian day the xxiii day of Januarii to whom I gaff 40 s. Item for ther drynckyng at Richard hygons in the hye strete as they cam rydyng throwgh Worceter from the more to ynckebarowe in wyne and cakes, 5 s.'4 The Journal has more than once taken us into the world of Mistress Ford and sweet Anne Page; as we read on we might think ourselves to be in Justice Shallow's orchard or by the table dormant in the hall of Chaucer's Franklin. Provisions must necessarily bulk large in any account book, but the impression is given by many documents of early Tudor England that they served almost as a medium of exchange or a form of accumulated wealth. Prior More records his New Year gifts for 1519: they come from a miscellaneous group of friends, clients and henchmen, ranging from the landlords of the Plough and the Cardinal's Hat to 'John yks wyfF: between them they contributed twenty capons, four dozen larks, two peacocks, two peahens, two geese, eight partridges, a shoulder of brawn, one lamb, one pig, six snipe and teal, one lamprey, a dish of trout and grayling, another of roach, and two cheeses, one of them being 'grete*. This score, however, was passed easily the following year, 1 n o , 88. There was also an Edmund Peers at Bristol who may have been another brother; cf. 78, 270. 2 94, 164, 356, 258, 272, 119, 242, 270.

3 146, 311, 397.

4 304, 250, 400.

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THE TUDOR SCENE

when the total of capons was twenty-three, with five peacocks, thirteen dozen larks, six woodcock, eight partridges, one 'feysand', four 'Stikkes of birds', three geese (one of them * green'), one duck, one cygnet, a hundred warden pears, twenty 'oregges' and two 'boxes of bisketts'.1 On the other hand, the presents appear to become more varied as the years pass. In 1519, the only friend who made no contribution to the larder was the abbot of Winchcombe's cousin, a mercer, who sent' a fyne hand napkyn'. In 1532, besides game and delicacies including 'a peece of marmylade' and three 'pownd gardeners', we notice 'a corporas case', 'a fygur of our lord', *a peyer of gloves', 'A tothe pycke garnesshed with selver & gylt', 'a pyllows bere', 'a peyer of knyffes' and 'a case to putt pennes & ynke in'. 2 Intermingled with the material or social expenses are a fair number with a religious purpose. The friars of Worcester, black and grey, often received gifts at Christmas, sometimes of a shilling, at other times of a dish of lampreys,3 and there are several entries such as the following, which must represent responses to a mendicant's request: 'to the prior of the fryurs of wyche [i.e. Droitwich] when he went to his generall chapter, 8 d.'4 All indications, indeed, show that the friars were still poor and dependent upon charitable gifts. Besides personal gifts, a number of benefactions to churches occur: 'peyd for ii pax to gyff to grymley church and hallow, n d . ' ; 'selver crewetts at grymley church, 22s.'; 'new schowryng and reparyng of the Alablaster tabull to the hye Awter of Grymley church, 4s. 6d.'; 'new rowde lofte at hymulton churche, u s . 3d.'; 'I bowght & gyff to hallow churche a chales all gylt weying xx unces, £ 5 - ' 5 Not all these gifts went to churches belonging to Worcester priory. There are, for example, subscriptions 'to seynt martins newe tower, 6s. 8d.', 'to the Sextone of moche malverne to the byldyng of the parisshe churche there, 3 s. 4d.', 'to the priur of little malverne towards the losses of his chalesses stolen, a noble'.6 Gifts on the occasion of a priest's first Mass are frequent,7 and the prior several times gave attention to the needs of an ancress, as 'payde in brycke lyme and sond to the reparacon of the Anckras hows by the charnel hows ex devocione, 10 s. od.' 8 Other instances of devotion occur; thus in 1527 he was admitted to the Third Order of St Francis: 'to the grey fryurs for my brotherhood, to ther relevyng, i2d.'9 and once he 1 77, 98. 2 361—2. The word 'marmalade' was first used of a conserve of quinces, and then for plum jam (OED); it had a consistency like that of our 'candied' fruit. A 'poundgardner', sometimes written by More as 'H. gardener', was a pomegranate; 'corporas' = corporal; 'pyllows bere' = pillow-case. 3 121 (Christmas, 1531): 'For iij pyes of lampurnes bake & gyff amongs all the grey fryurs, 12 d.' 340. 6 l68 4 88, 214, 2755 8o» 83> M9> *43> X79> 3777 E.g. 114: "The offryng to master porters son furst masse, 10s. od.' Cf. also 247, 284, 330. 8 136. This was presumably the ancress whom the Bishop of Dover found so difficult to eject ( Z P , xii, ii, 49); cf. 322. 9 281.

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notes a short pilgrimage: 'for expenses rydyng to hayles from cropthorn in pilgrimage, 2 s. 4 c!.'1 On the other hand, the seven shillings given 'to Symonds of byrmychame to be brother of the yelde there' was probably not ex devocwne? Cases of distress are met with help: 'rewarded to Nicholas the clerke of the church when he was Robbed, i2d.'; 'In rewards to a por man of overbury beyng brent I2d.'; and once a payment of 20 d. is recorded 'for ii shurts to William begger a por yong man'. It may have been the spirit of the season that led the prior one Christmas week to risk a shilling in reward 'to certen persons be syde the rodes for redempcion of a gentilman in turkey'. 3 If Prior More's life was in great part that of a country squire, the payments that reveal his personal tastes best are those traditional to monastic superiors of the Middle Ages. In his early years he was at pains to equip himself and his chapels with service books. There are several payments to Richard scryvener for writing breviaries and the like, and ' to sir Thomas Edwards [doubtless a priest] for lymnyng gyldyng and drawyng of certen of my masse bookes'. It is noteworthy that monks are not employed on this highly skilled work, whereas one of his early entries is of a shilling to dan Thomas Blockley 'for makyng and floresshyng of the begynnyng of the register'.4 The yearly visit to London was used for negotiating large purchases, as well as for ordinary shopping. In 1520 the prior bought a ring, two chalices and four pieces of plate for £20, and cloth of gold and orphreys to the value of £87 for a set of vestments comprising 'ii coops, a vestment [i.e., a chasuble], ii tynnacles, iii albes, ii stoles, iii fannells [i.e. maniples] . . .price of the hoole charge fyo. 18s. I4d.'5 In 1521 his stay in town saw purchases of furniture for the monastic choir: 'ii grete dextes [i.e. desks] with ii egulls... on to be in the qyur, the other to the hye Awter to rede the gospell upon with iiii candilsycks', together with 'ii grete candilsyckes for Johannis Awter for tapers', the whole costing £ i 8 . 6 In 1522 came the most costly purchase of his life, a precious mitre bought of John Cranks, goldsmith, for £49. 15^., and a pastoral staff for £28. ijsJ Whether or no More heard any criticism of these large expenses at the time cannot be known, but it is worth noting that they were to be brought against him more than ten years later, and that in the remaining thirteen 1 314. 2156. Pre-Reformation Birmingham was a place of some note; the prior was probably invited to join as a county magnate; his gild may have been that of the Holy Cross, for which v. VCH, IFarwkks, II, 347-8. 3 247, 376, 97. 4 120, 74, 79-80, 82, n 6 . Elsewhere (87) Sir Thomas Edwards appears as repairer of the prior's clock for 16s. 5 103—4; cf. 419. The orphrey (fr. orfevrerie) is the strip of precious material covering the seams of the vestments. The 'vestment' is clearly the priest's chasuble; the 'tynnacle' [tunicle] is the vestment of the deacon and subdeacon; 'fennel' [v. OED, s. 'fanon'] is the modern maniple. Egulls=eagles (for lecterns). 6 153; cf. 419. 7 163, 419; cf. A catalogue of the Rolls of the Obedientiaries. Appendix i n , 47—8.

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years of his rule he made only one purchase at all comparable to them. This was in 1525, when the acquisition of a 'grete byryles stone with the garnesshyng of hym at london' cost £10 with a considerable further sum for carriage when, three years later, the stone came down to Worcester and was placed in position before St John's altar.1 It was intended to be the prior's tombstone; like many other costly monuments erected during the lifetime of eminent men it never covered the body of its purchaser. Among the London purchases books often figured. Some were certainly bought for the convent library, others for himself. So far as can be ascertained, almost all the books purchased for cash were printed books, and many were patristic, scholastic and canonistic works that had long been classics—Seneca, Cyprian, Jerome, Gregory, Ambrose, Richard of St Victor, Aquinas, Hostiensis, Innocent IV, Zabarella. These were presumably bought as useful modern editions of books that had long been in manuscript at Worcester. A few are more personal: the prior twice bought copies of Bishop Langland's translation of the Rule of St Benedict, and copies of the English chronicles and the Life of Christ by Ludolph of Saxony may have been for private reading. On the whole, however, the number of books clearly bought to satisfy More's personal needs was small.2 Most notable of all in some respects is a group of five collections of early and recent statutes of England, going down to 1534. The prior, as will be seen, was for many years on the commission of peace, but the purchase may also remind us that all men in public place had to keep abreast of the prolific legislation of the Reformation Parliament. The Journal says little of the prior's relations with his convent, and only once records the appointment of an official.3 We learn casually that he himself exercised the functions of kitchener in the year 1530-1, and in the latter year there was an extensive * renewyng of disshes in the covent kychion'.4 As has been noted, More spent little time at Worcester, and then only at festival seasons, when guests must have taken up most of his leisure. He appears to have given a number of customary entertainments to the community—at Christmas, at 'quytide' (Quinquagesima Sunday), and most elaborately after the Maundy on Holy Thursday, when a greater 1 2ii, 217, 273. The whole cost £13. 6s. id. Byryle = ? beryl (cf. OED s.v.). 2 E.g. i n (1520): 'bokes to the library'; and LPy x, 1272, where More asks that he may have the books in his chamber at Worcester. Miss Fegan, in an interesting appendix, pp. 409—15, lists all his purchases of books and identifies the editions of many of them, indicating those which still survive in the Worcester Chapter Library. Still greater precision might now be attained by using A. W. Pollard's catalogues and N. Ker, Medieval Libraries. 3 The appointment is that of the scrutators in 1520 (127). Other scattered references are to gifts, especially to student monks. There are two payments for writing, on p. 74 to Dan Thomas Blockley for the register and pp. 347, 350 to Dan William Wolverley 'for prycking of iij Exultavit of v parts, 2 s.' This presumably refers to the setting of the alternate (chorus) verses of the Magnificat (Et exultavity etc.) to 'prick-song'. 4 For the prior as coquinarius, v. 330, 336. We may draw what inferences we will from the allusion on p. 258 (just before Advent, 1527) to the purchase of 'a peyer of slippers for martens, 10 d.'

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expense on wine is recorded than on any other day. He also paid regularly 10s. a quarter for the ten o'clock Mass, and is, ^d. yearly at Michaelmas for geese for the convent's breakfast.1 He had with him a chaplain and a monk-steward, to whom he paid 6s. 8d. a quarter, but of other monks we hear little. Battenhall was not, like Bearpark at Durham, a place of holiday for the brethren; the rewards 'to the iiij Novices at batnall the iii day after their profession' were probably made on the occasion of a formal visit.2 On the other hand, Battenhall was sufficiently near Worcester for monks to visit the prior without appearing in the accounts, and an entry occasionally occurs, when the prior is elsewhere, of sums paid to visiting brethren. The only group of these to figure at all frequently are the students at Oxford. Worcester had from the first sent a regular stream to the college—then Gloucester College—which now perpetuates the connection by its name, and it may have become customary that the prior should bear the expenses connected with the inception of masters and bachelors. Entries of such payments are not rare, as ' rewarded to dan John Lewarne to be bachelor of divinite in oxford, 40s/, and 'rewarded to dan Roger neckham to be Doctor of Divinite, 40 s. 2d.' The prior's legal advisers were similarly assisted; thus in 1524 a gift is recorded 'to mr Richard foxfords to his commencement to be doctor, 53 s. 4d.'3 The students at Oxford frequently received small gifts, usually when the prior was passing through the university town on the way to London. The first of these payments is in 1519: 'rewarded to scholars of oxforde, viz. of caunterbury and mawmesbury, 2 s. 8d.', and once a large payment occurs which More takes care shall not serve as a precedent: 'to dan bartholemes stoke student at oxford ex benevolo animo meo hoc anno £7*. 4 Two Worcester monks receive exceptional mention. The one is dan Robert Alchurche the sexton. An early entry shows him to have been trusted by More, and another, unique of its kind, notes his death ' in the Sextry a bowte vii of the clocke at nyght' on 10 December 1531. Thenceforward at intervals the prior pays a considerable sum for Masses for his soul.5 The other name has still more significance in the light of after events. In the autumn of 1527 and thenceforward for a considerable time, and again for a period in 1531, a series of payments is made to dan John Musard for working in the library on binding and repairing books.6 This 1 E.g. 208 (1525): 'a galand & half of claret, i8d.; a galand & half of Red wine, i8d. A galand of secke i2d. A potell of mawmesey 8d.' For the celebration of the Maundy three centuries earlier, v. Lanfrancs Monastic Constitutions^ 31—5. For the Mass, v. (e.g.) 189; for the geese (seven for 2s. 4^.), 254. 2 366. On the third day the newly professed, who had worn their hoods over their heads since pronouncing their vows, presented themselves for a ceremonial unpinning. It is typical of the age that they should have received a cash 'reward' of 4^. apiece. 3 79> 232> 2 I 5 4 86, 335. 'Mawmesbury' in the first passage is presumably the part of Gloucester College belonging to Malmesbury Abbeyj cf. RO, 1, 27. A gift to students from Glastonbury is recorded on p. 135. 5 127, 360, 389. 6 256-62, 322, 324.

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is almost the only payment of its kind to a monk in the diary, and it is natural to suppose that Musard may have been in some way an object of the prior's encouragement or care—a conjecture which receives some support from the note at New Year, 1531, of a gift 'of musard a potell glasse of aquavite*.1 If this were so, the care was ill requited, for at midsummer, 1531, there is the entry: 'the takyng of musard. Item rewarded to Roger bury, Lewes the bedull, John tyler and Richard the cellarer's horsekeeper for the fatching and conveying dan John Musard home from overbury after he robbed his master of certen plate & other things, 6 s.'2 Although Prior More made no great figure in the social or political life of the country, he could not, as head of a great house and a landowner of importance, escape certain public duties. For some years he can be seen entertaining the justices at times of sessions; in 1526 he is himself of the quorum, and his first appearance on the bench is recorded by the payment of 3s. 4
2 330-1.

3 238. He also appears as sitting on commissions of customs (247) and corn (255). 4 177, 311. Lord Sandys built 'die Vyne' near Basingstoke, from which he took his title 'Baron Sandys of the Vyne'; v. also DNB. 5 222: 'To John Taylor, 7s., moris taylor and Annes purser 20d. for sowyng of the hangyngs in the corte chamber.* ' T o colsull the glasyer for glasyng of a hole in the entrie next the chappell.' 'Item to hym for glasyng of the wyndow at the steyer heed at the stone chambur durr, &c.' Cf. also 224.

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moved to Battenhall for a month, returning to Worcester half-way through Holy Week, and departing again after Low Sunday, her retinue being the better by £7. 13 s. 4^. from gratuities received from the priory.1 Mary's offerings at the prior's Mass on St Wulstan's Day (19 January), Candlemas, Easter Sunday and the Assumption are recorded. The princess returned at the beginning of August and Thomas Brandon, 'the king's Joguler' was on hand; 2 when she left the prior escorted her to Cropthorne and Evesham. Shortly before this visit there is a note of three payments for wine 'for my lady salesbury sons', one of them being 'my lord mowtigeowe'.3 The imagination rests for a moment on the guest-hall at Worcester that year. England in 1526 must still have seemed a settled country with the future predictable, when Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell were still in private place, and the sword that was to divide kinsmen so sharply lay still sheathed. Yet the four visitors who sat there with the prior were all to know sorrow, and were all in their fashion to suffer, or to cause suffering, for their faith. The Countess and her elder son were to perish at the hands of the executioner, while the younger son was to die in exile haunted by the disaster that he had helped to cause. They must often have spoken of the absent brother, Reginald, also in part to be the cause of their fate, who was himself to die, a prince of the Church, on the same day as the little girl, his cousin, each of them alone in the new, harsh world which they had hoped to sweeten, but had only the more embittered. During all these years we can see Prior More from another angle among his fellow prelates. Abbot Kidderminster of Winchcombe and the abbots of Gloucester and Reading were occasional visitors;4 he was summoned to Westminster to hear Wolsey's scheme of reform in 1520,5 and found the cardinal expensive on more than one occasion, as: 'Md of £20 delyvered to the A. of Winchecombe for my lord cardinall as all other abbotts did [Low Week, 1520]'; 'Md that I have bowght to lend to my lord cardinall towarde his Jorney to calys for to treate of pease... vi horsses, the price of them £12. 4 s/, with more than £ 3 in addition for harness and carriage to London in July 1521.6 He had commitments also in the diocese. The see of Worcester was held for many years by a succession of Italians and, when it became vacant in 1522 on the resignation of Giulio de' Medici, More honoured a venerable tradition by straightway sending out his subprior and a notary as visitors of the diocese sede vacante. For this year, too, the prior as official acted as receiver and disburser of all moneys coming officially to the see, or expended by it on routine acts and salaries.? Three years later his peace was disturbed by a visitation conducted by Dr John Allen, who shared with Cromwell among 1 227, 233, 235. 3 233. Mowtigeowe = Montague. 5 96. 73-"-

2 37-9, 235. 4 93, 114,404. 6 106, 136.

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Wolsey's servants a notoriety for violent and rapacious conduct.1 His injunctions, however, though interesting in themselves as showing Wolsey's conception of reform, were not drastic and were probably not observed. Other clouds, however, were soon on the horizon. The years after 1529 were full of vital changes, with rumours of more impending, and even if we had no further knowledge we might guess that it was not a time when a great monastery could prosper in peace of spirit while its head spent his days among the rewards and fairies of Grimley. In fact, the cathedral priory was not at peace, and the interplay within its walls of selfishness and frailty with the designs of the powerful minister who for some years before the end had been receiving a large annual fee from the prior, might be taken as an exemplary instance of the combination of agencies that brought about the downfall of the monasteries. Sources of friction and weakness, which had existed for decades or centuries without fatal consequences, were now to bring the fabric down. We shall glance on a later page at the last days of Worcester. The prior himself, so far as can be gathered from the copious available evidence, was not directly responsible. His life, though it may have had little of the monastic in it, was morally blameless. His expenses, if occasionally large, and if sometimes they exceeded his income, were not ruinous or prodigal, and the general impression to be gained from his Journal is that of a good administrator, open-handed but alert. In all respects he was the child of his age. When the moment came, he and his community duly subscribed to the Oath of Succession and to the series of declarations repudiating the pope. He followed, in fact, both for good and for evil, the way of the world. 1 The visitation took place on 8 April 1525. The injunctions are printed by Canon J. M. Wilson in 'The Visitations and Injunctions of Cardinal Wolsey and Archbishop Cranmer'. The first of Wolsey's injunctions (p. 360) is that the subprior and cellarer are deprived of office. These were presumably Neckham and Fordham, perhaps already suspended by More. Cranmer's visitation took place 17—19 August 1534 (v. Journal, 391), not 14 August as stated by Wilson, op. cit. 357. The injunctions are printed by Canon Wilson, pp. 364-7.

Larimer's visitation is in W. H. Frere, Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, H, 12-14.

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CHAPTER X

BUTLEY AND DURHAM I. THE BUTLEY CHRONICLE

A monastic chronicle of the decades immediately preceding the Dissolution is so rare as to be almost unique; the register of Butley Priory, therefore, though in itself jejune, and rendered still more so by curtailment in transmission, deserves for this reason alone a brief mention. Butley, a house of Austin canons founded in 1171 by Ranulf Glanvil, had enjoyed throughout its history an uneventful and tolerably prosperous existence.1 It lay at the head of a creek in East Suffolk between Aldeburgh and Felixstowe, where the salt marshes gave way to heath and rough pasture, and these in turn to the great oaks and solitary rides of Staverton forest. The tidal waters in the medieval centuries washed the timbers of a wharf within little more than a hundred yards of the monastery, and stone for the fabric of the church had been floated thither from the valley of the Yonne in France. The fabric was large, and the endowment substantial from both manors and churches in the neighbourhood. The armorial frieze of the gatehouse, one of the most remarkable works of its kind to survive, is an impressive instance both of the ability of a remote house to commission craftsmen of the first rank and of the ramifications of its patronage among the regional nobility and gentry. Appropriately enough, the relations of the house with these people is one of the chief interests of the chronicle. The short register or chronicle,2 in form a mixture of both types of book, runs from 1510101535 and was probably the work of the subprior, William Woodbridge. The author has no pretensions to historical skill, and he lacks altogether the humanistic facility of composing in classical Latin which was not uncommon at the time; his entries are of interest partly for a few vivid glimpses of daily life, pardy for the number of names and dates they add to East Anglian j&m, and partly for the impression they give of a languid religious life being overtaken unawares by great events. The last forty years of Butley's life are tolerably well documented. Besides the chronicle, there is record of four visitations between 1505 and 1535 ky t n e long-lived Bishop Nykke of Norwich or his commissioners, 3 1 For Butley, y. art., 'Butley Priory', by J. N. L. Myres, in AJ, xc, and * Butley Priory' by the same writer in Oxford Essays in Medieval History presented to H. E. Salter. For the gatehouse, v. articles, *The later history of the priory and the gatehouse', by W. J. Caroe", in AJ, xc, 229-81, and an heraldic description by J. G. Mann in Country Life, 25 March 1933. 2 This has been edited with a long and informative introduction as The Register or Chronicle of Butley Priory, Suffolk, iSio-iSjS, by Professor A. G. Dickens. 3 Norwich Visitations, ed. A. Jessopp, 131, 177, 216, 285.

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and notices and correspondence concerning two elections and the process of dissolution. The economic scene is illustrated both by the Valor and by a catalogue of the household at the moment of liquidation.1 From all this a fairly coherent picture is obtained of a community, peaceful and observant when compared with many of the decayed or sordid houses of canons in Norfolk and Suffolk, but mediocre in talent and spirituality, and showing no disposition or capacity to oppose the forces that were gradually to overwhelm it. The priory had a gross income of about £400, and a community of some twelve canons and a prior; it was therefore comfortably off, and as it also enjoyed efficient administration during the period covered by the chronicle it was never in any serious straits. Building and furnishing continued; a prior's house had recently been built, a new infirmary was ordered at a visitation and apparently constructed; the roof of the great chamber of the prior collapsed entirely in February 1531, and was repaired by Pentecost, and in the same year most of the kitchen roof was destroyed by fire and repaired in three weeks; this kitchen had itself been built only a dozen years previously.2 In the church the rood fell and was repaired, organs great and small were repaired in 1511, when an organ with two stops was presented to the Lady Chapel, and in 1534 the prior installed at his own expense a new organ with five stops.3 To the reader of the present day perhaps the most interesting entries are those recounting the visits of patrons and the great. The first of these to be recorded was that in 1516 of the twenty-year-old Mary Tudor who, after a brief year as Queen of France, had given herself en secondes noces, in spite of her royal brother's disapproval, to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. She was received with the usual ceremonial accorded to exalted personages, and the chronicler records the copes and procession, with lights, incense, holy water, silk cushions and the rest.4 Then, after an interval, we hear of the visit of Thomas, third Duke of Norfolk, in 1526. He arrived on Sunday, 16 September, in time for supper, with William, Lord Willoughby (who was to die a month later), and forty others, and after dinner on the following day spent the afternoon and evening till ten o'clock hunting the fox in Scuttegrove Wood with his friends and their sons. On Tuesday he took a survey of other woods, and the prior, who was soon to purchase land from him, rode with him. The Duke was at Butley again in July 1529, with the young Earl of Surrey and twenty-three servants.5 The following year the Duchess of Suffolk was at Butley once more. She and her husband arrived in the evening of 12 July and stayed, save for short visits to friends, until 22 August.6 That month provided seasonable weather, and the queen (as the chronicler calls her) took her 1 Printed by Dickens, 71-3. It may be noted that Prior Thomas Sudbury of Butley (1529—38) became bishop of Ipswich in 1536. 2 Ibid. 59, 35. 3 Ibid. 47, 28, 66. 4 Ibid. 33. 5 Ibid. 50. 6 Ibid. 51-2.

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supper on several evenings in the various gardens that clustered to the east of the claustral buildings; probably the officials concerned bore part, at least, of the charges and sat at the ducal table. On the last recorded occasion, 21 August, when the party met in the sacrist's garden north of the church, a heavy storm broke up the al fresco meal; the tables were carried into the church which, it is to be hoped, resisted the weather more efficiently than complaints at a previous year's visitation had suggested.1 The queen, we are told, gave half-a-crown at two solemn Masses, and five shillings when she departed to sample Benedictine hospitality at Eye. Next year the ducal pair returned on 11 September, and two days later hunted the fox in Staverton park, where they had dinner and games under the oaks. A week later they repeated the performance in Scuttegrove wood, with a successful supper, and the queen remained till 16 November.2 During this stay she made offerings which reached the convenient accounting total of 16s. %d.; this even sum can hardly have been by chance, as the odd eightpence was contributed as a parting gift. The death of the duchess is duly recorded in 1535, when it was apparently hoped that the obsequies would be at Butley. In the event, Bury St Edmunds had that distinction, and the prior of Butley had to be content with singing the epistle at the solemn requiem.3 Too much should not be made of these social events, spread over a long space of time. It may even be that it was their rarity that earned them a record, and in any case such functions, nowadays as ever, are the food of mediocre chroniclers. In one respect, times had changed but little since the first fathers of Citeaux stood firm against the feudal lord of the land holding his court in the monastery. More significant, perhaps, is the characteristic Tudor exploitation of a religious house without any evidence of gratitude or patronage of its best interests. II. THE RITES OF DURHAM

The Journal of Prior More of Worcester allowed us to see, as in a frame, the very texture of the fabric in which was woven the pattern of daily life at a great monastery on the eve of suppression. With all its limitations and omissions, it is something we can handle and hold to the light, as one feels the roughness and knots of a web and notes the varied and irregular flaws 1 Ibid. 52: 'Et 21 die Augusta in Orto fratris Nicholai ex parte boriali Ecclesiae hujus, scilicet ante Cenae finem coacta fuit Ecclesiam intrare et cenam ibidem finivit pluvia pre nimia.' Cf. Norwich Visitations (26 June 1526), 217: *ecclesia conventualis est ruinosa in tectura videlicet plumbo et pluit in diversis locis in ecclesia'. 2 Ibid. 54: 'Regina et Dux.. .vulpes apud parcum de Staverton venati sunt et ibidem Prandium suum sub Quercubus sumpsere cum Joco et Ludo satis Jucundis. . . et die veneris . . . equitabant ad boscum vocatum Stuttegrove Wood vulpes venantes et ibidem prandium suum cordis jocunditate et alacritate sumebant.' The editor, perhaps inadvertently, gives the impression (p. 23) that Lady Mounteagle stayed behind at Butley for her confinement; it is clear (p. 55) that she remained at Glemham. 3 Ibid. 60 and n. 8.

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of colour. A very different picture is given by another document, more than half a century later in date, that has had the fortune to survive. This is the so-called Rites of Durham,1 a detailed but in many ways incomplete and disorderly account of the ritual and other furnishings of the cathedral church, and of certain ceremonies connected with them, together with a summary description of the monastic buildings and an account of the duties of some of the monastic officials shortly before the suppression of the house. The compilation is anonymous, but the year of composition is given as 1593, and nothing in the book is inconsistent with such a date. The familiarity shown throughout not only with the customs of the monastery and with the names of the monastic and other officials, but with details of the furniture and daily practices which had long since been removed or changed, offers a strong indication that the writer is drawing upon his own recollections. Fifty-eight years had passed since Cromwell's visitors had made their first appearance at Durham, bringing with them the beginning of sorrows for those who wished no novelty, but an old man of seventyfive or upwards might have retained a very vivid memory of half-a-dozen or more impressionable years on one side or other of his twentieth birthday. Internal evidence would suggest (though no stronger word can be used) that the writer was not a monk himself, though intimately connected with the life of the house and having had access to some of its records.2 He has been identified with one George Bates, the clerk of the feretory of St Cuthbert and keeper of the priory register shortly before and after the Dissolution, but the evidence for this is not compelling.3 Whoever he may 1 The Rites ofDurham is a treatise without title or author's name, contained in a number of manuscripts both at Durham itself and in private hands. The relationship of these to each other has not been fully worked out, but the oldest is certainly a manuscript roll of c. 1595 apparently written by two or more otherwise unknown scribes, and beginning at chapter xv, almost one-quarter of the way through the work. Another manuscript, containing the whole treatise, was written c. 1620 and came shortly after that date into the hands of the excellent Cosin, not yet bishop of Durham, who emended it in places and added notes in sympathy with the author. The date of composition appears to be fixed by a statement that ' the collection of this memorial of Antiquitie was in the year of our Lord god A thousand five hundreth Nuntie & thre', which statement follows closely upon a reference to an event which took place 'of laite in the yeare... 1589'. The author nowhere gives any indication of his identity or alludes to any personal experience; a note in one of the manuscripts {Rites, ed. Fowler, xiv) said to be in the hand of the Cambridge antiquary, the northerner Thomas Baker (pb. 1740), identifies him with 'George Bates the last Register of the house', adding that there are indications of this in the book itself. George Bates and his duties certainly figure more than once (e.g. 78, 94), but the present writer does not feel that the attribution is at all certain. The Rites, which had been printed in part in 1672, was one of the first documents to be published by the Suttees Society, as edited by James Raine the elder in 1844. This volume had fallen out of the market before the end of the century and was still in demand; it was therefore re-edited in 1903 by Canon Fowler, who used additional manuscripts and added copious and very valuable notes. He did not, however, attack the question of authorship. References in what follows are given to this second edition. 2 Allusions to the monks and their ceremonies and their edifying life seem to indicate a spectator rather than an actor; post-Dissolution events, on the other hand, seem to be described by an eye-witness who was not a member of the new capitular foundation. 3 Rites, 29, and supra, n. 1, for the date of compilation.

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have been, he was a man of the old way of thinking in religion, as were so many in Durham and about the neighbourhood. Though his aim is antiquarian, not controversial, and though he avoids harsh personal or doctrinal references, his sympathies are warmly with the past, and he uses the old, traditional phrases, as when he speaks of'the Blessed sacrament' or 'our blessed Ladie', or refers to the 'godlie Religiousnes of monasticall life* of the past. Moreover, his language, when writing of the monks and their ceremonies, is always sympathetic and uncritical, and we shall surely be right in thinking of him as a Catholic at heart and probably also in action, still moving about the cathedral and its precinct, but never reconciled to the destruction of so much beauty and dignified ceremonial that had been part of his daily experience in the morning of life. Many of the details from his pages have been cited elsewhere in these volumes, but it may be worth while to give a glimpse of the whole picture. It is precisely that which a loyal and simple-minded dependant might be expected to paint, without any theological or spiritual depth, but with a tenacious memory in which past sunshine lingers. Several of his vignettes are familiar from frequent quotation by apologists of recent years : Over against the said Treasure house door, there was a fair great stall of wainscott where the Novices did sitt and learn, and also the master of the Novices had a pretty stall or seat of wainscott adjoyning on the south side of the Treasure house door over against the stall where die Novices did sitt and look on their bookes, and there did sitt and teach the said Novices both forenoon and afternoon, and also there were no strangers nor other persons suffered to molest or trouble any of the said Novices or Monkes in their Carrells, they being studying on their bookes within the Cloyster, for there was a Porter appointed to keep the Cloyster door for the same use and purpose.... * Also the mounckes was accustomed every daie aftere thei dyned to goe thorowgh the cloister... to the centorie [cemetery] garth wher all the mounckes was buried, and ther did stand all bair heade a Certain longe Space, praieng amongst the Toumbes and throwghes [grave-slabs] for there brethren soules being buryed there, and when they hadd done there prayers then they did Returne to the cloyster, and there did studie there bookes untill iii of the clocke that they went to Evensong.2 The said mounckes weare the onelie writers of all the actes and deades of the bushoppes and priors of the abbeys church of Durham, and of all the Cronacles and stories: and also did write and sett furth all thinges that was wourthie to be noted, what actes and what miracles was done in every yere and in what moneth. Which there doinges were most manifestly and vndoubtedlie to be 4 most Just and trewe and was alwaies most vertuouslie occupied, never Idle, but either writing of good and goddly wourkes or studying the holie scriptures to the setting turthe of the honour and glorie of god, and for the edifieinge of the 1 Ibid. 84-5. In all the passages which follow the spelling, with its many inconsistencies, follows Fowler's text. 2 Ibid. 87. 3 Durham, though never an independent house under an abbot, is frequently given the title of abbey in medieval documents, and this has survived in local use till recent times. 4 So Fowler's text, but some omission would seem to have taken place.

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people, as well in example of good life and conversac'on, as by preaching the worde of god. Thus yow may se and perceave howe the mounckes and Religious men wer occupied in most godly writing and other exercissis in auncient tyme.1 Within the fermery in onnder neth the master of the fermeryes chamber was a stronge presonne the which was ordeyned for all such as weere greate offenders as yf any of the Mounckes had bene taiken with any felony or in any adultrie he should haue syttin ther in presonne for the space of one hole yere in chynes without any company, except the master of the fermery who did let downe there meate thorowgh a trap Dour in a corde, being a great distance from them....2 There was a famouse house of hospitallitie called the geste haule with in the abbey garth of Durham on the weste syde towardes the water ther interteynment not being inferior to any place in Ingland, both for the goodness of ther diete, the sweete and daintie furneture of there Lodginges, and generally all thinges necessarie for travellers.... This haule is a goodly brave place much like unto the body of a church with verey fair pillers supporting yt on ether syde and in the mydest of the haule a most large Raunge for the fyer.3 On the right hand as yow goe out of the cloysters in to the fermery was the commone house and a Maister thereof, the house being to this end, to haue a fyre keapt in yt all wynter for the Mounckes to cume and warme them at, being allowed no fyre but that onely. Except the Maisters and officers of the house who had there severall fyres. There was belonging to the common house a garding and a bowlinge allie on the Backe side of the said house towardes the water for the Nouyces Sume tymes to recreat them selves when they had remedy4 of there maister he standing by to se ther good order. Also within this howse dyd the maister therof keepe his o Sapientia ones in the yeare, viz.: Betweixt Martinmes and christinmes (a sollemne banquett that the prior and couent dyd use at that tyme of the yere onely) wher ther Banquett was of figes and reysinges aile and caikes and thereof no superflwitie or excesse but a scholasticall and moderat congratulac'on amonges diem selves. 5 These idyllic glimpses of monastic life were undoubtedly intended to present an aspect of the past that controversialists and pamphleteers of the preceding fifty years had neglected, and they cannot be taken as a complete picture. The old conservative, however, is not primarily an apologist, but a ritualist and an antiquary, and some of his pages give a more vivid impression of the interior of a great monastic church than can be found elsewhere. His [i.e. St Cuthbert's] sacred shrine was exalted with most curious workmanshipp of fine and costly green marble all limned and guilted with gold hauinge y 88.

2 Ibid. 89. The language is vague and does not imply a recent or habitual use of the prison. Visitation records of the early sixteenth century suggest that such drastic penalties had become very rare if not almost unknown by that time, but it is conceivable that the prison was used for cases of violent lunacy. 3 Ibid. 89-90. 4 Remedy, in the sense of'recreation', * holiday*, is still current at Winchester College. 5 Ibid. 88-9. This passage seems to reflect a somewhat blurred memory. The monks as well as the novices doubtless used the bowling green, and the feast mentioned was only one of several.

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foure seates or places conuenient under the shrine for the pilgrims or lame men sittinge on theire knees to leane and rest on, in time of theire deuout offeringes and feruent prayers to God and holy St Cuthbert, for his miraculous releife and succour which beinge neuer wantinge made the shrine to bee so richly inuested, that it was estimated to bee one of the most sumptuous monuments in all England, so great were the offerings and Jewells that were bestowed uppon it, and no lesse the miracles that were done by it, euen in theise latter dayes.... In the time o£ deuine seruice they were accustomed to drawe upp the couer of St Cuthbert's shrine beinge of Wainescott wherevnto was fastned vnto every corner of the said Cover to a loope of Iron a stronge Cord which Cord was all fest together over the Midst over the Cover. And a strong rope was fest vnto the loopes or bindinge of the said Cordes which runn upp and downe in a pully under the Vault which was aboue over St Cuthbert's feretorie for the drawinge upp of the Cover of the said shrine, and the said rope was fastned to a loope of Iron in the North piller of the ferretory: haueing six silver bells fastned to the said rope, soe as when the cover of the same was drawinge upp the belles did make such a good sound that itt did stirr all the peoples harts that was within the Church to repaire unto itt and to make ther praiers to God and holy St Cuthbert, and that the behoulders might see the glorous ornam'ts therof:. . . which cover was all gilded over and of eyther side was painted fower lively Images curious to the beholders and on the East End was painted the picture of our Saviour sittinge on a Rainebowe to geive Judgment very lively to the behoulders and on the West end of itt was the picture of our Lady and our Saviour on her knee And on the topp of the Cover from end to end was most fyne brattishing [i.e. cornice] of carved worke cutt owte with Dragons and other beasts moste artificially wrought and the inside was Vernished with a fyne sanguine colour that itt might be more perspicuous to the beholders.1 The shrine lay immediately behind the high altar, and in front of it those in the monastic choir would have seen the pyx containing the Sacred Host which, as generally in England, was not reserved in an aumbry but suspended over the mensa: Within the said quire ouer the high Altar did hang a rich and most sumptuous Canapie for the Blessed sacrament to hang within it which had 2 irons fastened in the french peere [i.e. franche pierre, freestone] uery finely gilt which held the canapie ouer the midst of the said high Altar... wheron did stand a pellican all of siluer uppon the height of the said Canopie uerye finely gilded giuinge hir bloud to hir younge ones, in token that Christ did giue his bloud for the sinns of the world, and it was goodly to behould for the blessed sacrament to hange in, and a marueilous faire pix that the holy blessed sacrament did hange in which was of most pure fine gold most curiously wrought of gold smith worke, and the white cloth that hung ouer the pix was of uerye fine lawne all embroydered and wrought aboue with gold and red silke, And 4 great and round knopes of gold maruelous and cunningly wrought with great tassells of gold and redd silke hanginge at them, and at the 4 corners of the white lawne cloth. And the crooke that hung within the cloth that the pix did hang on was of gold and the cords that did draw it upp and downe was made of fine white strong silke.2 1 Ibid. 3-5.

2 Ibid. 8.

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Yet both shrine and pyx would have been hidden from Maundy Thursday till a week after Ascension Day by the vast erection known as The Paschal: Also there was a goodly monument pertaininge to the Church called the pascall that did stand uppon a foure square thick planke of w o o d . . . before the high altar... and at euerye corner of the planke was an iron ringe wherunto the feete of the pascall were adioyned, representinge the pictures of the foure flyinge dragons, as also the pictures of the 4 Euangelists aboue the tops of the dragons underneath the nethermost bosse, all supportinge the whole pascall and in the 4 quarters haue beene foure Christall stones, and in the 4 small dragons 4 heads 4 christall stones as by the holes doe appeare1 and on euerye side of the 4 dragons there is curious antick work as beasts and men uppon horsbacks with bucklers bowes and shafts, and knotts with broad leaues spred uppon the knotts uery finely wrought all beinge of most fine and curious candlestick mettall glistring as the Gold it self having six.... Flowers... comminge from it three of euerye side wheron did stand in euerye of the said flowers a taper of wax and on the height of the said candlestick or pascall... was a faire large flower beinge the principall flower which was the 7 candlestick; the pascall in latitude did containe almost the bredth of the quire, in longitude that did extend to the height of the uault, wherein did stand a long peece of wood reachinge within a mans length to the uppermost uault roofe of the church, wheron stood a great long square taper of wax called the pascall; a fine conueyance through the said roofe of the church to light the taper withall; in conclusion the pascall was estimated to bee one of the rarest monuments in all England.* Involved as this description may be, the impression given is one of very great magnificence. Scarcely less impressive is the account of the ceremony on Easter morning, a relic from the distant past of Dunstan's England and the monasteries of the Dark Ages that has never found a place in the Roman rite: There was in the abbye church of duresme uerye solemne seruice uppon easter day betweene 3 and 4 of the clocke in the morninge in honour of the resurrection where 2 of the oldest monkes of the quire came to the sepulchre, beinge sett upp upon good friday after the passion all couered with redd uelvett and embrodered with gold, and then did sence it either monke with a paire of siluer sencors sittinge on theire knees before the sepulchre, then they both risinge came to the sepulchre, out of the which with great reverence they tooke a maruelous beautiful! Image of our saviour representinge the resurrection with a crosse in his hand in the breast wherof was enclosed in bright Christall the holy sacrament of the altar, throughe the which christall the blessed host was conspicuous to the behoulders, then after the eleuation of the said picture carryed by the said 2 monkes uppon a faire ueluett cushion all embroidered singinge the anthem of christus resurgens they brought to the high altar settinge that on the midst therof... the which anthem beinge ended the 2 monkes tooke up the i The wording suggests that the despoiled base of the candlestick was still preserved in the church when this passage was written. The whole description recalls metalwork of the early twelfth century such as that of the much smaller Gloucester candlestick in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 2 Rites, 10-11.

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cushines and the picture from the altar supportinge it betwixt them, proceeding in procession from the high altar to the south quire dore where there was 4 antient gentlemen belonginge to the prior appointed to attend theire comminge holdinge upp a most rich cannopye of purple ueluett tasled round about with redd silke, and gold fringe, and at euerye corner did stand one of theise ancient gentlemen to beare it ouer the said Image, with the holy sacrament carried by two monkes round about the church, the whole quire waitinge uppon it with goodly torches and great store of other lights, all singinge reioyceinge and praising god most deuoutly till they came to the high altar againe, wheron they did place the said Image there to remaine untill the assencion day.1 The writer then passes in review many of the altars and decorations of the church, dwelling especially on the Jesus altar before the great rood at the entry of the choir: Also there was in the hight of the said wall from piller to piller the whole storie and passion of our Lord wrowghte in stone most curiously and most fynely gilte, and also aboue the said storie and passion was all the whole storie and pictures of the xii apostles verie artificiallye sett furth and verie fynelie gilte contening from the one piller to thother, a border very artificially wrowght in stone with marvelous fyne coulers verye curiouslye and excellent fynly gilt with branches and flowres, the more that a man did looke on it the more was his affection to behold y t . . . and also aboue the hight of all upon the waule did stande the most goodly and famous Roode that was in all this land, with the picture of Marie on thone syde, and the picture of John on thother, with two splendent and glisteringe archangels one on thone syde of Mary, and the other of the other syde of Johne, so what for the fairness of the wall the staitlynes of the pictures and the lyuelyhoode of the paynting it was thowght to be one of the goodliest monuments in that church.2 When he comes to describe the Galilee the writer is at pains to make it clear that there were sermons in the cathedral of a Sunday long before Dean Whittingham came back from Geneva: Euery sonnday in the yere there was a sermon preched [by one of the monks] in the gallely at after none from one of the clocke till iii and at xii of the clock the great Bell of the gelleley was toulled euery sonndaie iii quarters of an howre and roung the forth quarter till one of the clock, that all the people of the towne myght haue warnyng to come and here the worde of god preached... ii men of the kitching was charged with the Ringing of on Bell, and the iiii men of the church that dyd lye allwayes in the church was charged with the Ringing of the third Bell, and vi othere was alwaies charged with the Rynging of the great Bell, viz., ii of the back howse, ii of the Brew house and ii of the killne. And in the latter dayes of kyng Henrie the eighte the house was supprest, and after that tyme the said Bells was neuer Rounge.3 The bells thus hanging idle were, we are told, noticed by the Calvinistic dean, who determined to break them up and sell them as scrap metal. The suffragan bishop of Berwick, Thomas Sparke, however, sometime monastic 1 Ibid. 12-13.

2 Ibid. 33.

3 Ibid. 39.

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chamberlain of the priory, was too quick for him, and had three of the bells removed to form a chime in the belfry of the central tower. The writer goes on to describe the Lady Mass in the Galilee: With in the said gallelei in the Cantarie being all of most excellent blewe marble stood our Ladies alter, a verie sumptuous Monument fynly adorned with curious wainscott woorke both aboue the head, at the back, and at either end of the said alter, the wainscott being devised and furnished with most heavenly pictures so lyuely in cullers and giiting as that they did gretly adorne the said alter where our Ladies masse was song daly by the master of the song scole, with certaine decons and quiristers, the master playing upon a paire of faire orgaines the tyme of our Ladies messe.1 These extracts will have made it clear that the sympathies of the writer lay with the old world. He had lived to see all these things go—the shrine of St Cuthbert dismantled by the commissioners of Henry VIII under the expert eyes of 'skilfull lapidaries';2 he had seen the plate taken away for melting, and the vestments to furnish brocades and velvets for the mercers; he had seen the retables defaced and the altars despoiled. He had seen Dean Whittingham tearing up the tombs of the priors, breaking up the brasses and carved chalices and carrying away 'the Residewe' to 'make a washinge howse of many of them for women Landerers to washe in', and had watched him uprooting from the pavement of the cathedral' two Holy Water stones of fyne marble very artificially made and graven' in order that they might be ' caryed into his kitching and put vnto profayne uses: and ther stoode during his liffe in which stones thei dyd stepe ther beefe and salt fysh'.3 He traces for us the further progress of these stoups; the larger one passed from the kitchen of the deanery to the buttery and finally, in part, to 'Lambes shop the black smyth vpon fframygaite brige end'. As for the lesser one, it had been found so useful by Mrs Whittingham (nee Calvin) that on moving out of the deanery after her bereavement she 'browght yt into her howse in the bayly and sett it there in her kitchinge'.4 For all his love of the old ways (perhaps, indeed, because of his love of them) the writer gives evidence enough that life in the cathedral monastery was dignified rather than austere. The monks of Durham, as we can learn also from their copious account rolls, were living on 'wages' in a monastery that had been made tolerably comfortable by Tudor standards. The anchorite in the cathedral5 and the prisoner in the dungeon were alike legendary figures. Yet, whatever their life may have held of ease and mediocrity, the beauty of the setting remained, and the display on high days and holy seasons of the treasures of artists and craftsmen that the centuries had accumulated. The lights still 'did burne continually both day and night' in the great cressets before the high altar, 'In token that 1 Rites, 43—4.

2 Ibid. 102.

3 Ibid. 60—1.

4 Ibid. 61.

5 Ibid. 17: 'The Amanchoridge.. .being in antient time inhabited with an Anchorite.'

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1

the house was alwayes watchinge to god', and the sound of bells at midnight 'in the lanthorne called the new worke', 2 clear in the magical silence of midsummer or borne fitfully across the Wear in winter storms, gave assurance to the townspeople and the countryside * in the deep night that all was well'. In the great church itself the shrines of St Cuthbert and of Bede the Venerable took the mind back to the earliest days of the faith in Northumbria, while the silver pyx with its lights bore witness to a presence more sacred than that of the Temple. Throughout the days and years sunlight and taperlight had rested upon the blue and gold and crimson and cream and silver of the vestments and vessels. The old conservative did not live to see the final desecration, when thousands of Scottish prisoners, famished, sick and dying, tore down the screens and tabernacle work for firewood, and filled the cathedral with flame and smoke,3 but he had seen the shrine and the pyx disappear. The glory had departed from Durham, for the ark of God had been taken away. I Ibid. 14.

3 Ibid, (a later insertion).

2 Ibid. 22.

$art GCtoo THE GATHERING STORM

CHAPTER XI

ERASMUS Although the story of the suppression of the monasteries in England has been told repeatedly and by writers of very different views and aims, what may be called the pre-history of the destruction of the religious life and the denial of its ideals has never been studied in any detail. English historians, whatever period of history may be their theme, have always shown themselves reluctant to look beyond the Channel for the wellsprings of currents of English thought and action, and not only the suppression of the monasteries, but the whole great political, social and religious revolution of which it was a part has very generally been treated as if it were a relatively sudden and entirely insular affair. Many of the most familiar accounts of the Reformation in England take their start well on in the reign of Henry VIII, and make little allowance of influences from abroad before the emergence of Luther. With the Reformation and its distant origins we are not directly concerned, but even such a small part of the revolution as the suppression of the monasteries has a wide background. It may indeed be true that the last decisive impulse was due to purely material considerations as they appeared to an all-powerful minister, but the ease with which the work was done, the propaganda by which it was accompanied, the general acquiescence with which it was received, and it may be added, the facility with which the consent of the king was obtained, can only be explained by the presence of ideas unsympathetic to the traditional framework of religious society in the minds of the generality of the small class of Englishmen who inspired or criticized high policy. It has, indeed, often been said by critics abroad that Englishmen are prone to attribute all their actions of public policy to a zeal for righteousness; certainly, the destruction of the monasteries has often been attributed to the inevitable, if long delayed, eruptions of moral indignation at the sight of luxury and vice. Yet even if the existence of such corruption be granted, history can show few if any examples of a great revolution (which is by definition a sudden phenomenon) accomplished solely by moral indignation. Revolutions are rather the final transference into the clumsy and intractable medium of action of ideas that have been germinating long enough to affect the mental climate of an epoch. The mental climate that could approve, or at least tolerate, the disappearance of the monastic ideal, seen in all the varieties of the religious life, had been constituted in part by the fusion of two great streams of thought. There was what may be called, for want of a better term, the radical, puritanical current, impossible to define and manifesting itself

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chiefly by its antagonism to ecclesiastical institutions of every kind—to the sacraments, to the hierarchical, mediating priesthood, and to classes and degrees among those calling themselves Christians. The ancestry of such an outlook was long, reaching back at least as far as the twelfth century to the Waldenses, the Poor Catholics and the Humiliati of Lombardy, Provence and the Rhineland; it had been given full citizenship in England by Wyclif and the Lollards, and it has endured as a powerful and even as a characteristic force for four centuries wherever the so-called AngloSaxon culture has penetrated. In its extreme form, as enunciated by Wyclif and preserved by his followers, it reprobated any set of man-made rules and practices as unwarranted complications of the simplicity of the gospel, and regarded monks and friars as deviating from the pure ideal of the Christian and hence as intrinsically harmful. How strong this current was in the first decades of sixteenth-century England is extremely difficult to say, since those who held such views were invariably heretics on other counts, and remained on the whole mute and elusive until the invading flood of Lutheranism gave them courage and a voice. The second great current, hitherto unduly neglected, yet undoubtedly very pervasive and powerful in the higher and educated levels of society, whence came the wielders of power and the diffusers of propaganda, was the new enlightenment, of which Colet and More were early English representatives, but of which Erasmus was above all others the prophet. This was a more complex stream, of which the waters can be made susceptible of infinite analysis, but no account of early Tudor England can afford to leave it out of the reckoning. Its head may be found in the religious movement originating in what is now the heart of Holland towards the end of the fourteenth century, with its centre at Deventer around Gerard Groot and the Brethren of the Common Life, expanding into the Augustinian congregation of Windesheim and the schools of the Low Countries, and expressing itself in a phase of religious sentiment which came to be known as the devotio moderna.1 This, while fully Catholic and orthodox, was, if the minds of those who adopted it could be analysed by some psychological spectroscope, at one extreme of the range of colours in which the Spanish-Italian minds of the Counter-Reformation occupied the place furthest removed in the opposite direction. It was an orthodoxy which accepted but set little store by the hierarchical framework of the Church, with its technical discipline of theology and complicated machinery of canon law, with the world-wide resources of the papacy and the policies of the centralized orders; which preferred in their stead the family, the group of associates, or the independent houses of Austin canons, as the foci of religious action, and turned from elaborate liturgical services and fixed ceremonial practices and scholastic meditations to the simple, direct imitation of Christ which, as i There is no satisfactory and complete account in English of the devotio moderna, but the subject is touched upon by E. F. Jacob in Essays in the Conciliar Epoch, 121—53.

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often among peoples of Germanic origin, could on occasion lose its dogmatic firmness and become an emotional pietism, but which in its most characteristic form could rise, in the school of Thomas a Kempis, to a classical expression of Christian and Catholic life, accepted as such even by a St Teresa and a St Ignatius. Although Gerard Groot had known Ruysbroeck and spent some years in a Charterhouse, the Brethren of the Common Life and the canons of Windesheim drew apart from the mystical traditions of Eckhart, Tauler and the Dominicans and Carthusians of the Rhineland, and the mystical element still present in the Imitatio Christi is not typical of the latter half of the fifteenth century. As this century wore on, the devotio moderna extended its influence and in part changed its character. One of the forms it took, significant in view of later developments, was a piety based on a reading of the synoptic gospels and St Paul rather than on the theological doctrines expressed by the definitions of the Church; this tended to emphasize the practices of primitive Christianity as revealed in the career and writings of the Apostle, and tended to seek in the gospels the simple, human, historic incidents rather than the declaration of theological truths or the recognition of types and symbols and prophecies that had formed such a large part of medieval exegesis. It was probably from this wind of sentiment, rather than from direct Wycliffian teaching, that Colet first drew his taste for the simple exposition of Scripture, and of St Paul in particular, as also his distaste for pomps and ceremonies of all kinds. This piety of Deventer, streaming southwards towards the end of the fifteenth century, encountered another current flowing northwards from Italy, that of the critical, historical and philological approach to the New Testament elaborated by Lorenzo Valla1 and his imitators. The Brethren of the Common Life had always been great educators, and their pupils were therefore well able to receive the scholarship, technically more advanced than theirs, of the Italian and later of the French humanists, now beginning to be diffused by the new invention of printing. When to the purely linguistic and critical analysis of Valla were added the achievements of the humanistic editors and commentators on the early Fathers and historians, it might well seem, in the first flush of enthusiastic discovery, that a scholar now had all the equipment needed for the reconstruction of the framework and attitude of mind of the early Christian Church. This intoxicating New Learning, clothed in the nervous and flexible language of the great humanists, claiming to show for the first time the early age of Christianity in something approaching to a clear historical light, and contrasting so strongly with the outward show of the Church under the Borgia papacy and of the schools dominated- by a nominalist theology, produced an intellectual shock comparable to that which the writings of Darwin were to produce upon the sheltered minds of a later generation in England. The 1 Valla's Annotationes on the gospels were not printed until 1505, but Erasmus had seen them when a student.

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New Learning, indeed, gave to the Wycliffian and Hussite doctrine of the all-sufficiency of Scripture the intellectual instrument that had hitherto been lacking. Individual, 'private', judgment as to the meaning of the Scriptures and the teaching of the early Church seemed no longer, as with the first Lollards, a mere whim or a personal preference. In men of scholarship it could appear to be the inevitable result of the critical examination of literary texts and historical facts. Among all those influenced by these currents of thought and religious sentiment in north-western Europe one man, in the early years of the sixteenth century, emerged and shone out as at once the standard-bearer and the prophet of his kind. We are not concerned here with Erasmus1 as the focus of a critical phase of European religious history, still less with his relationship to the leaders of the conservative and revolutionary forces in the great controversy that began at Wittenberg. Erasmus, however, like Voltaire in a later age, was a revolution in himself, and his influence upon all educated men, whether of letters or action, was so individual and so pervasive, that his responsibility in forming a climate of opinion cannot be neglected, least of all by Englishmen since his influence in English circles of thought has been somewhat obscured. While his direct contacts, as a young and still impressionable man, with Colet and More have often been described,2 the influence upon a younger generation of 'Erasmism' as it appears in his writings and those of his imitators, has rarely been noticed by historians of the English Reformation. Erasmus, in this respect resembling an Abelard or a Newman, is one of those men of genius whose complex minds present so many facets that any summary judgment stands self-condemned, and any precise label can at once be criticized. With Erasmus, also, as with Newman again or with Cicero, the marvellous style acts as a charm; while he is speaking to us, all criticism is stilled; he has won us, and we cannot believe that the mind of the master is less sincere than his voice, or that his arguments are less adequate than his language. He is so sane, so persuasive, so humane, that 1 The literature on Erasmus is enormous, and the varieties of judgment upon him as numerous as the books. Some measure of his influence on his age may be obtained at a glance by referring to the pages occupied by the editions and translations of his works in the catalogue of a great library such as that of the British Museum or Cambridge University. Within the last fifty years the materials for the understanding of his life and mind have been rendered notably more accessible by the monumental edition of his letters by P. S. and H. M. Allen, Opus Epistolarum D. Erasmi Roterodamensis (Oxford, 12 vols.; completed by index volume, 1906—58). Reference will henceforth be made to this edition by volume and page. This has given opportunity to M. A. Renaudet to analyse the development of Erasmus's thought, with a justice and penetration never before achieved, in a series of articles and books of which Etudes Erasmiennes (15 21-9), published in 1939, is the most valuable for our purpose. At the same time, the researches of M. M. Bataillon, culminating in his great work, Erasme en Espagne (Paris, 1937), have served to establish the existence, in the second decade of the sixteenth century, of an 'Erasmian' movement throughout Europe. 2 In particular by F. Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers (Oxford, 1887), which, appearing when J. R. Green was at work on his Short History, passed substantially into the consciousness of generations at school and university.

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it is only with an effort that we can bring ourselves to examine his words for their implications, their ambiguities, and their failure in direct assertion. Erasmus was accused during his lifetime of heresy, laxism, Lutheranism and double-dealing; his followers were being persecuted and punished in Spain at the very moment when, towards the end of his life, Pope Paul III desired to admit him into the Sacred College; though a succession of popes for thirty years had accepted his dedications, praised his work and requested his aid against the enemies of the Roman Church, his books, long after his death, were put upon the Roman Index. It was left to the eighteenth century to hail him as the first great rationalist of the modern world. To-day all would agree that he desired to be, and considered himself to be, an orthodox Catholic throughout his life and to the end; 1 he was in fact so considered by his contemporaries, including all the popes who reigned during his long literary career, and a short time before his death he received, not for the first time, an official hint that a cardinal's hat could be his for the asking.2 Most historians would also be in agreement that, whatever may be said of the wisdom or theological acumen or moral courage of his decisions as to how to act and write and speak in the face of Luther's assaults, he showed a remarkable consistency throughout his literary life in proposing a certain ideal of the Christian life, and a no less consistent attitude towards all forms of extreme opinion. As to the precise doctrinal formulation of this ideal, however, and still more as to its essential orthodoxy, there has always been a variety of opinion, and writers, both within and without the Catholic Church, have been found to admire it and to reprobate it, to maintain its orthodoxy, and to regard it as subversive of the traditional faith. Perhaps it would be fairly near the truth to say that while it would not be easy to isolate from his writings any theological proposition that was contrary to any pre-Tridentine formula of doctrine, his whole expression of the Christian revelation, and his attitude to revealed truth, differs very significantly from that of one who follows by instinct or desire the 'mind of the Church'. 3 Thus, while never denying what had been defined, or 1 So much is certain, but the extent of his daily conformity to normal Catholic practice is, like so much about him, obscure. Thus, for example, he undoubtedly approached the Sacrament of Penance at times, but whether he frequented it is another matter; he never abandoned belief in the Real Presence and undoubtedly attended Mass, but wheiher he habitually offered the Holy Sacrifice as a priest, or communicated, seems unascertainable. He died with words of Christian faith and trust on his lips; Luther's bitter fling that he died sine cruce, sine luce, sine Deo, is thus far unjustified; but it does not seem to be either recorded or denied that he asked for, and received, the Last Sacraments. Similarly, the severe judgment of Godet in the DTC that Erasmus was a priest 'sans vocation et sans piete, non sans foi', might seem scarcely justified in face of the years spent by Erasmus in editing and commenting upon the New Testament. 2 Cf. ep. 3048 (xi, 217) and briefs to Erasmus of Paul III, ibid. 3021, 3034 (xi, 137, 188). 3 Perhaps the most sensitive analysis of Erasmus's outlook is that of M. Renaudet, Etudes Erasmiennes, ch. iv, 'Le Modernisme erasmien', esp. pp. 122-30. M. Renaudet writes without a trace of odium theologicum, but with a just appreciation of traditional Catholic doctrine, which is, indeed, a necessary condition of any criticism of Erasmus, and without which many otherwise gifted writers have repeated meaningless platitudes. KROIII

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flouting what had been ordained, by the supreme authority of the Church, he remained as it were agnostic to the thesis that a religious truth could be contained within a theological formula, or a virtuous life regulated by a disciplinary code. He inherited, directly from his Dutch masters, and indirectly from the victorious Nominalism of the previous century, a distrust of metaphysics and of theological speculation and formulation,1 but for the mysticism and ' fldeism' in which many other religious minds took refuge he substituted a positive, practical religious ideal based on the teaching of the gospel as interpreted by personal, critical study of the text,2 and for the traditional scheme of the soul's holiness deriving from the supernatural virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit he substituted a picture of the good life in which the moral wisdom of the past, as seen in the ethical writings of Greece and Rome, was joined to the teaching of the early Christian Fathers. The * philosophy of Christ', which he preaches in the Enchiridion and in the Commentaries and in many another work, is one in which a wide culture and a humanistic moral outlook form the basis of a life modelled on the gospel teaching presented in a purely human fashion. It is a persuasive, seductive ideal, and Erasmus never denies the need of divine illumination and help for the man who is to live a Christian life, nor does he omit to tell of the price that has been paid by the Son of God on behalf of mankind. Nevertheless, it is impossible to feel satisfied that the theology and ascetical teaching of Erasmus adequately recognize the wholly supernatural plane on which the life of Christ moved,3 and to which the life of the Christian is potentially elevated by baptism, and joined in fullness by the Holy Eucharist—a life which implies depths of love and wisdom and of redemptive suffering of which the unaided human mind could not dream and to which the unaided human will could not attempt to attain. Similarly, Erasmus never denied the affirmations of the Virgin Birth and the divine motherhood of Mary as defined in his day, but the mother of Christ is for him the young mother of Bethlehem; that in her divine motherhood are contained her Immaculate Conception, her universal advocacy for all, and her supreme excellence among God's creatures, the readers of Erasmus, and Erasmus himself, were far from realizing. His religious ideal, though presented with all the seductive charm of reasonable argument and salted wit and grace of language, is a kind of * low-tension' Christianity, a de-spiritualized religion, that has 1 Renaudet, op. cit. 124, writes of * son pyrrhonisme un peu sommaire, son gout personnel et profond pour une certaine humilite de pensee en face du mystere du monde', and continues (125): 'II estime l'esprit humain a jamais incapable de saisir les realites supremes.' 2 Ibid. 130, where Renaudet writes of his *mefiance irreductible a l'egard de toute speculation; il est une sorte de positivisme theologique, fonde sur la sainte £criture, et qui demande a la seule £criture le sens du mystere divin cache dans le monde.' 3 Renaudet, 170-1, remarks justly: 'Pourtant l'esprit de cette critique, si prudent, si respectueuse de tout ce qui represente un effort de la pensee, n'est deja plus catholique . . .il affirme trop haut que dans la vie religieuse, l'esprit seul compte, et que le reste est indifferent... on pourra l'accuser d'offrir de Jesus une image trop humaine.... Sa conception de la grace est d'un moraliste.'

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been well called by a sensitive modern critic the * modernism* of Erasmus, and it was this that spread far and wide in all the cultivated circles of north-western Europe in the two decades that immediately preceded the papal condemnation of Luther.1 The extent of the influence of Erasmus in creating a critical, untraditional climate of mind can scarcely be exaggerated. Perhaps Voltaire is the only writer and thinker in the modern world whose influence on his generation during his lifetime has been so widespread. For our purpose, however, the direct criticisms of Erasmus are more significant than his presentation of the Christian life, or his tireless advocacy of humane learning, or his influence in the field of critical scholarship. There was in him, for all his dislike of violence, a very strong dissolvent force.2 Indeed, it was the vigorous and determined criticism of what he deemed serious abuses in the Church that earned for him the remorseless enmity of numberless individuals in the groups that were his targets; it was in reaction to his attacks that they formulated their accusations of doctrinal unsoundness. It may perhaps be added, that it is the manner of these attacks, rather than their aim and object, that arouses a feeling of uneasiness in the mind of a reader of to-day. The tireless iteration of the same charges over a space of thirty years and more recalls the not dissimilar methods of Gerald of Wales and John Wyclif; this, and the use of the weapons of satire and irony and fiction, seem to place the great debate upon the dialectical, if not even upon the rhetorical and the recreational level, rather than upon the purely spiritual or even the purely moral one, where the high seriousness can be maintained that alone carries conviction and troubles consciences and so justifies its severity. Here, we are directly concerned solely with Erasmus's criticisms of the religious life and of those who followed it. Two introductory observations must be made. The first is, that Erasmus had himself in youth entered the 1 Renaudet, 122, thus defines this 'modernism': 'Refus d'admettre que l'intelligence du dogme chretien a i t . . . atteint une formule complete et definitive. Affirmation du bienfait que chaque progres realise dans tout domaine de savoir apporte a la pensee chretienne.. . . Refus d'admettre que les regies de la vie chretienne se trouvent a jamais codifiees dans la discipline d'une Eglise; affirmation de l'aide qu'apporte, a la pratique de l'£vangile, chaque progres realise dans Tart de vivre.' True as this is, it could perhaps, like all 'modernism', be put still more succinctly; in the last resort, Erasmus as a theological writer does not fully admit the traditional implication of the doctrine of the Incarnation—the assumption of human nature, Christ's and the Christian's, into the divine life: Christ's by the hypostatic union, the Christian's by the sonship of adoption. 2 The very real difference between the Erasmian and the Lutheran, and still more the Calvinistic, conception of reform and the well-known riposte to Luther's epigram on the origin of the Reformation, must not lead us to suppose, as some writers have suggested, that Erasmus's reformed Church would have been wholly Catholic in character, as would, let us say, Thomas More's. It would be truer, though again an over-simplification, to say that the Erasmian conception of reform mingled with that of Luther in some, at least, of the programmes of the sixteenth century. Even Cranmer, though not by temper an Erasmian, owed something to the great humanist, and Erasmian ideas can be found at various moments in the Anglican and other communions—which is perhaps no more than to say that Erasmus, like Ockham or Descartes, was the first to give firm expression to a way o£ thought which had perennial appeal.

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religious life and assumed its obligations; he had subsequently abandoned his vocation as irksome and uncongenial many years before he obtained the papal dispensation which on the forensic level * regularized' his position. Whatever the circumstances may have been (and so far as any external judgment can be made at such a distance of time it would seem clear that his entry into religion was neither wholly spontaneous nor wholly spiritual in motive, and that the surroundings in which he found himself were narrow and harsh) there can be little doubt that he retained throughout his life, at least on the subconscious level of his mind, not only a sense that an injustice had been done to him, but also the need to prove to himself that he had lost no opportunity for spiritual progress by abandoning the life of his profession.1 The second observation is less important, but may serve to prevent misunderstanding. When Erasmus is speaking of the religious life, and even of the monastic life, he has in mind almost invariably the religious who were most in evidence in the urban centres in which almost his whole life was passed, and who were his enemies for the greater part of it. The friars, and especially the Dominican and Franciscan friars, were, as a class, devoted to the formal theology of the schools and were the enemies of the bonae litteraey the literary culture and attainments, of the humanists; they were therefore on a double count the opponents of Erasmus, and as the controlling force in academic decisions, and as holding a monopoly of popular preaching, they were in a position to condemn his writings and to stir up indignation against his every action. This type of friar was most numerous in the university towns of the Low Countries, Germany and France; in England though, as we have seen, it was not unknown, the friars were in general less distinguished and therefore less in evidence. The gravamina of the charges which Erasmus repeated so often in his published writings and his private letters and also, one may suppose, in his private conversations were: that the religious were as a class Pharisees and hypocrites; and that they found in regulations and ceremonies (by which Erasmus understood formal, external practices and prayers of all kinds) the essence, the sign, and the test of sanctity, thus exalting empty observance before mercy and love. This criticism was in fact an application of the leading thesis of Erasmus's philosophia Christii that there was only one way of Christian life, that of following the teaching of the gospel, and only one promise to make to God, that of the baptismal vows. All beyond this might be tolerated in those who found it useful, but was inessential and in general undesirable. This typically 'Erasmic* position which, while not explicidy destroying the traditional Catholic ascetical tradition, nevertheless gave it the go-by as something inessential, may be regarded as a complete reversal on the part of the new learning of the attempt of the Gregorian reformers, St Bernard and even St Francis, to 'monachize* the 1 For Erasmus's own account of this, v. his autobiographical letter to Gerard Geldenhauer dating from 1523 to 1526 in ep. 1436 (v, 427); cf. ep. 447 (11, 291).

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whole Church. The careful reader of Bernard's Sermons on the Canticle or the genuine writings and sayings of St Francis—and, it may be added, the reader of Walter Hilton's Scale ofPerfection or a Kempis's Imitation of Christ—will be able to judge for himself what justification there was for the charges made by the opponents of Erasmus that he debased and de-spiritualized the following of Christ, by depriving it alike of the arduous degrees of ascent to a perfection beyond that of a human standard, and of the union of the mind and will with God, of the lover with the Beloved, following the Incarnate Word to Calvary, which Christian tradition had always preached as the crown of a Christian's endeavour. A few extracts from the writings of Erasmus may serve to give precision to these general statements; they will show also that Erasmus, alike in his critical and his creative thought, was consistent, not to say stationary, throughout his literary life. Thus in the Enchiridion of 1504 he wrote: Indeed, if truth be told, do we not see members of the most austere monastic orders maintaining that the essence of perfection lies in ceremonies or in a fixed quantity of psalmody or in manual labour? And if you come to close quarters with these men and question them on spiritual matters you will scarcely find one who does not walk according to the flesh.. . . The monastic life should not be equated with the virtuous life: it is just one type of life that may be either advantageous or not according to the individual's dispositions of mind and body. I would no more persuade you to it than I would dissuade you from it.1 The same contention, phrased a little more harshly, appears in a letter written to his sometime fellow-religious Servatius Rogerius, once the object of his ardent affection and now, as prior of Steyn, endeavouring to recall Erasmus to his old home:'I will make bold to say', Erasmus writes, that Christian piety has taken no little harm from the so-called religious orders, though their first origins may have been due to genuine devotion.... What can be more loathsome or more impious than these orders when they become relaxed? And if you look at those whose reputation is fair or even excellent I doubt whether you will find anything but cold Jewish ceremonies without a trace of a likeness of Christ.2 It is in these that they pride themselves, by these that they judge and condemn others.. . . 'There are here', continues Erasmus, writing somewhat more warmly of his Cambridge colleagues than in other letters, ' colleges in which the spirit of religion and the simplicity of life is such that you would think nothing of any religious order in comparison with them, if you could see them'. But perhaps the fullest and most explicit statement is made in the long letter to Paul Volz, himself abbot of the Benedictine house of 1 Enchiridion, ed. Cantab. (1685), 169-70, 291: 'Monachatus non est pietas, sed vitae genus pro suo cuique corporis ingeniique habitu, vel utile, vel inutile/ 2 Ep. 296 (1, 567-8), of 8 July 1514: 'Praeter figuras quasdam et Judaicas caeremonias, haud scio quam Christi reperias imaginem.'

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Hiigshofen, which Erasmus set as a preface to the new edition of the Enchiridion published by Froben in 1518: I do not blame Franciscans or Benedictines for cherishing their Rules, but I blame those of them who think their Rule more efficacious than the Gospel I have no quarrel with them because some live on fish, others on vegetables and herbs, and others again on eggs, but I do most earnestly warn of their mistake those who, like the Jews of old, base on such practices a conviction of their own virtue, and prefer themselves to others on account of trifles of this kind devised by mortals of no importance,1 while at the same time they fail to see anything wrong in attacking the good name of others with calumnies.... And I wish most earnestly that canon law forbade anyone to be caught in snares of this kind [sc. the vows of religion] under the age of thirty, before he has self-knowledge and before he knows wherein the heart of true religion consists.... My own earnest wish would be (and I am sure all truly devout men would wish the same) that the religious life of the gospels might be so deeply rooted in the hearts of men that they would be content with this, and would not seek the Rule of Benedict or Francis... for I feel that the three vows devised by man could add very little to one who in purity and sincerity had observed that first and only vow which we take in baptism, not to man but to Christ.2 In these and many similar passages Erasmus launched upon his world an attitude towards the traditional monastic life, and indeed towards the traditional practice of the 'counsels' of the gospel, that was to have a great future. Though in the last analysis—in what it implied rather than in what it expressed—it differed little from that of Wyclif and Hus, it was far more persuasive (or, as Erasmus's opponents would say, insidious) by reason of the justice of many of the observations, and the moderation and humanity and ambiguity of the language. Like so much else in the Erasmian programme, it gently deflated the Christian ideal, replacing it with what seemed to be the spirit of the gospel, but was in fact its wraith. Nowhere is his method more characteristic than in his well-known biographical sketch of Jean Vitrier, the Franciscan of St Omer whom he puts alongside of Colet as his beau idial of a Christian priest. The picture he draws is indeed an attractive one and, though we know little of Vitrier save what Erasmus tells us,3 there is no need to suppose it to be anything but true in its main lines. We are given clearly to understand, however, that Vitrier's virtues owed nothing to his religious profession, to which, indeed, his attitude was so Erasmian that we are left wondering how far the disciple is speaking of his master, or how far that subtle artist is reading his own experience and opinions in his friend's mind: Although [Erasmus writes] he was indeed by no means an enthusiastic supporter of that way of life into which he had slipped, or had been drawn, in 1 Ep. 296 (in, 373): 'Ex huiusmodi nugis ab homuncionibus [sc. SS. Benedicto et Francisco] repertis.* 2 Ibid, in, 373-5. Volz, a few years later (1526), joined the Reformers. 3 Vitrier, the propagator of a 'paulinisme singulierement libre' (Renaudet), was censured as a 'Hussite' by the Sorbonne in 1498.

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1

youthful ignorance. He would often say to me that it was the life of idiots rather than of religious men to sleep and wake and sleep again, to speak and keep silence, all at the sound of a bell... and to do everything by human regulations rather than by Christ's law.2 Nothing, he said, was more inequitable than the equality observed among those who were unequally gifted, especially when, as often in monasteries, heaven-sent genius meant for better things is buried under ceremonies or human regulations or jealous confinement. Yet he neither suggested a change of life to anyone else nor attempted anything of the sort himself. Compared with these radical opinions, the criticisms of individuals and the ad hominem arguments, which Erasmus scatters throughout those of his writings which, with the Encomium Moriae, the Adagia and the Colloquies, became a part of the mental furniture of all the cultivated minds of Europe, seem unimportant, but they penetrated deep into the consciousness and memories of his age. The rich abbot of sporting tastes and bucolic mind, who can see nothing but waste of time in learning, even if it is scriptural or patristic ;3 the friars and nuns who boggled at a rubric or a minute regulation while engaged in the pursuit of luxury or lust;4 the overfed, lazy monk, the proud, worldly, licentious friar—all these and many more recur in narratives of exquisite urbanity, salted with every art of satire and irony. Numberless other men of the period, from orthodox and high- minded thinkers like More to pamphleteers or popular preachers, were willing to jeer or laugh or storm at the worldly or vicious monk and friar. Erasmus did more: he aimed at showing, often with sincere respect and courtesy towards individuals, that the vowed life of the gospel counsels was at best an unnecessary formalism and more often a pharisaical hypocrisy. It was an accretion of the ages, not to be rudely destroyed, but to be allowed to disappear if its hour had passed. It was a more civilized treatment of the topic than Wyclif's, a more Fabian approach, but the end would have been no less inevitable. Erasmus first visited England in the summer of 1499, when he was probably approaching his thirty-third birthday and was already well known in the world of letters. He was still remarkably receptive, and his 1 Ep. 1211 (iv, 508) of 13 June 1521 to Jodocus Jonas: *.. .illud vitae institutum, in quod per inscitiam aetatis fuerat vel delapsus vel pertractus*. 2 Ibid.'. 'Denique nihil non facere ad praescriptum humanum potius quam ad Christi regulam.' Erasmus had a genius for ambiguity, but the ordinary reader might be excused for thinking the whole passage to be a complete denial of the traditional Christian teaching that the doctrine and command of duly constituted authority in the Church is to be accepted as that of Christ himself. Contrast with the text of Erasmus that of St Benedict, Regula, c. 5: 'Quia obedientia quae maioribus praebetur Deo exhibetur.' 3 Cf. Colloquium abbatis et erudltae. The remark is made there 'olim rara avis erat abbas indoctus, nunc nihil vulgatius* (jColloquia, 1, 273). The abbot in the dialogue believes in keeping his monks ignorant to ensure their submission. 4 Cf. the dialogue on fish-eating {ibid. 11, 34 seqq.). Much of this is a favourite topic of Erasmus and the stories have many of the marks of a ben trovato. More takes up the motif, though not the story, in his letter to a Monk (Correspondence, ed. Rogers, pp. 196-7).

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enthusiastic letters to and about his newly-made English friends might well be those of a man ten years younger. His English visit had been arranged by his whilom pupil and life-long friend, William Blount, Lord Mountj oy, and after staying with him at various houses (from one of which at Eltham he paid a call upon the youthful royal family in company with More) he proceeded to Oxford in the early autumn. As he was technically still an Augustinian canon, it was natural that he should stay at St Mary's College, of which Richard Charnock was then prior. Charnock, whose tenure of office at Oxford (c. 1492-c. 1501) fell between periods of rule at Dunstable and London, was a man of some culture and urbanity, whose admiration for the celebrated young humanist was warmly reciprocated by Erasmus.1 He was the friend of Colet, and is linked with him more than once by his guest, who would be willing to live in their company even in the depths of Scythia.2 He is compounded of humane learning, kindliness and integrity, the light and ornament of his order, a prior of all the Graces.3 He advanced money to Erasmus, and the latter notes his presence at a dinner given by Colet, perhaps at Magdalen, which was followed by a disputation of which we are given details; he was partly responsible for persuading Erasmus to undertake the task of collecting proverbs for the first edition of the Adagia; he was a nonpareil, the ornament and glory of English religious.4 Erasmus paid a second visit to England from the autumn of 1505 to midsummer 1506, and now Richard Whytford of Syon is among his friends. His third stay was in 1508, and it was then, when an inmate of More's household, that he threw off his brief masterpiece, the Encomium Moriae. His fourth and longest stay was at Cambridge, from August 1511 to July 1514, when he worked at Queens' upon the Greek New Testament. It was then (1512) that he visited Walsingham, thus acquiring material for one of his most celebrated colloquies a dozen years later. 5 It was perhaps then also, when staying with William Gonnell in the summer months at Landbeach, that he visited the nearby Denney, where some years later two sisters of his friend Thomas Grey were Poor Clares.6 In 1514 he left Cambridge for Louvain, and save for a short visit in 1519 never returned to England, though he corresponded with his friends and patrons till the 1 Ep. 108 (i, 249): 'Humanissimus praesul Richardus Charnocus.' For him, v. Allen's notes adloc. 2 Ep. 115 (1, 267) of November 1499 to W. Blount: 'Cum his duobus amicis [sc. Colet and Charnock] ego vel in extrema Scythia vivere non recusem.' 3 Ep. 116 (1, 268): 'Richardus prior, ille Charitum antistes.. .homo non minus mirabili mixtura ex omnium literarum generibus omnibus quam ex summa humanitate summaque item integritate conflatus.' 4 Ep. 126 (1, 290), being the preface to the Adagia addressed to W. Blount: 'Deum immortalem, qua humanitate qua integritate viri [sc. Blount and Charnock], ut quam tu nobilitatis, tam ille Britannicae religionis unicum ornamentum ac decus mihi videatur.' 5 Ep. 262 (1, 513) of 9 May 1512 to A. Ammonius: 'Ego, mi Andrea, pro felici rerum ecclesiasticarum successu votum suscepi. Jam scio religionem probas. Visam virginem Vualsingamicam atque illic Graecum carmen votivum suspendam.* 6 Ep. 1927 (vn, 283) of 1527-8.

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end of his life, and always looked back with affectionate regrets, as to a lost paradise, to the glimpses he had had, under Thomas More's roof in Bucklebury, of that happy childhood he had never himself known.1 In no country, perhaps, did Erasmus make fewer enemies and more distinguished friends than in England, but with all his freedom from ties of family or loyalty he was never physically or psychologically at home outside the comfortable, well-furnished houses of the cultured cities near the Rhine. If the writings of Erasmus were widely read in Spain, whither he had never gone and where there were few who knew him personally, it may be taken for granted that they were familiar in England wherever the new learning had penetrated.2 We are not left without numerous indications: among those known to have been friends or correspondents of Erasmus are all the distinguished men of the generation immediately before the Reformation and many of the younger men who helped to bring it about—Henry himself and Queen Katharine, Wolsey, Foxe, Warham, Longland, Tunstall, Stokesley, Fisher, Colet, Grocyn, Linacre, More, Gardiner, Whytford, Lupset, Pace, Mountjoy, Grey; it is a remarkable litany, and it could be extended indefinitely. In England, also, he had his opponents: John Batmanson the Carthusian, Edward Lee, Richard Kidderminster, and the unknown monk of More's long letter,-* but they were neither many nor inveterate. There can, indeed, be no question that the works of Erasmus were as familiar to all who could enjoy Latin, ' to ilka man o' decent feeling', as, let us say, the essays of Macaulay were to educated men of the 1840's. Indeed, the public of Erasmus was wider still. From 1525 onwards a broadening stream of translations began to flow from the English presses. Characteristically enough, these were for several years chiefly the educational and devotional works; it was only in 1533 with the Enchiridion (reprinted 1534, 1540, 1541, and twice in 1544) that the chief manifestos of the Erasmian programme began to be read far and wide.4 In other words, prior to the decision to move against the monasteries the influence of Erasmian criticism and 'modernism' could have been felt only among the intellectual leaders of the country. 1 Ep. 2.2.12. (VIII, 274) of 6 September 1529 to Margaret Roper, on receipt of Holbein's drawing of the More family. ' Frequenter illud apud me soleo optare, ut semel etiam ante fatalem vitae diem intueri contingat charissimam mihi sodalitatem; cui meae, qualis qualis est, vel fortunae vel gloriae bonam partem debeo, nee ullis mortalium debeo libentius.' This letter, written in Erasmus's sixty-third year, is one of the most sincere and moving of the whole collection. Si sic omnia dixisset. It is one of the characteristics of that enigmatic personality that he can thus, in the turn of a sentence, dissolve all hostile feelings. 2 The remarkable vogue, and subsequent extirpation, of Erasmism in Spain has been the subject of study for M. M. Bataillon (v. supra, p. 144 n. 1). 3 For Edward Lee, v. the letters of 1520-2 passim; for Batmanson, v. Allen, epp. 1099, 1113, and infra, p. 154; for Kidderminster, Allen, epp. 1061, 1126 (iv, 309—10), and supra, p. 94; for the monk, infra, p. 469. 4 For the works of Erasmus printed or translated in England before 15 40, v. A. W. Pollard, Short-Title Catalogue. They were seventeen in all.

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Nowhere is the influence of Erasmus more striking than in the writings of Sir Thomas More. More's mind and character were essentially simple, inasmuch as he always approached intellectual questions with a realist, common-sense outlook and judged his own actions and those of others by straightforward, homely moral standards. Yet he had a mind of great brilliance which was at the same time extremely receptive, and he was both a cautious man and a humble one. Throughout his public life until the last crisis he was showing different facets of his personality to different groups: to his humanist friends he was the admired wit and the inquisitive, critical author of Utopia; to Wolsey and the king he was the capable and loyal subordinate; to his family he was the affectionate and generous father. Only Margaret, and perhaps even she not fully, knew the real More and his lonely sanctity that gradually for many years, and then rapidly in time of trial, ripened into fullness. More in early years accepted and admired the intellectual pre-eminence of Erasmus, and for a time at least he made his friend's opinions his own. Though as a young man he had lived in the Charterhouse, he had chosen another way of life, and though he retained his admiration for the monastic ideal he had no illusions as to the shortcomings of the normal monk and friar of his own day. It is, however, surprising, and it is the measure of the strength of Erasmus's influence, to find that in c. 1520 he still makes his friend's arguments his own. The document in which this appears most clearly is a long letter to a monk who has attacked Erasmus's edition of the Greek Testament.1 More's anonymous correspondent may well have been the Carthusian John Batmanson, but More builds no argument on his precise status or personality. He does accuse him roundly, however, of ignorance and pride for venturing to correct Erasmus in a matter of scholarship, and also for supposing that holiness consists in outward rites and garments, and in the mechanical observance of rules, ceremonies and exercises. The letter as a whole is not among More's most attractive compositions: it is long, and repetitions abound. Its chief interest lies in showing how Erasmus could dominate a mind as profoundly conservative as More's. How far it may be thought to show that what Erasmus took to be the .monastic mentality really existed in England must be a matter of conjecture. A dozen years after More's letter another admirer of Erasmus, a younger man, set down his thoughts on monastic life with particular reference to England. Thomas Starkey* had for long moved in conservative circles. Born c. 1495-9, he had been a Fellow of Magdalen, Oxford, and had subsequently taken orders. Like More, he stayed for a time in the Charterhouse; then he became chaplain to the Countess of Salisbury, and was ultimately caught up by Cromwell into the group of humanists who wrote 1 For More's letter, v. Appendix 1, infra. 2 For Starkey, v. DNB. A Dialogue between Reginal Pole and Thomas Lupset was edited by K. M. Burton in 1948.

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pamphlets for the government; he was at this time a royal chaplain. He died in 1538; had he lived longer he would have shown more clearly where his real sympathies lay. Like his fellows in Cromwell's circle Starkey had savoured Renaissance Italy and had been among the intimates of Reginald Pole. How far the opinions he attributed to Pole are in character and how far imaginary or personal to Starkey himself is irrelevant to our present purpose; we can take them as being current coin among the advanced young humanists of the day. Lupset opens the topic of monasticism by praising it as the haven of a few wealthy men who fear the world's temptations; he himself anticipates Milton in preferring a bold conflict with evil to a fugitive and cloistered virtue. After several pages Pole raises the burning Erasmian questions: Pole. And how think you by the law which admitteth to religion of all sorts, youth of all ages almost, insomuch that you shall see some freres whom you would judge to be born in the habit, they are so little and young admitted thereto? Lupset, Surely of this, after my mind, springeth the destruction of all good and perfit religion.. . . Pole. And what think you by the law which bindeth priests to chastity? Lupset. . . . I will say as Pope Pius did, that great reason in the beginning of the Church brought that law into the order of the Church, but now greater reason should take the same away again.1 Pole then continues with a condemnation of the * great sort of idle abbey-lubbers which are apt to do nothing but to eat and drink', and Lupset returns to his original thesis, that monasteries, few in number, should exist for the benefit of men tired of the business and vanity of the world, where they might * wholly give their minds to prayer, study and high contemplation'.2 Pole then sketches a programme by which a few houses should be kept for such people, none of them young, and that these or other monasteries should be appointed as schools for children of the nobility; Westminster and St Albans are noted as particularly suitable for this purpose. As for abbots and priors, they should be elected for threeyear periods as are 'the order of the monks of Italy', and they should live among their brethren so as 'not to triumph in their chambers as they do, which causeth all the envy in the cloisters'. Finally, he would admit'none under thirty year of age'.3 We need scarcely be told that this was all ' written in our days of the most famous divine, Erasmus, whose counsel I [Starkey] would in our studies we might follow'.4 Little did Starkey know that his old patron Pole would, within a few years, be presenting to the pope himself criticisms of the religious more searching, and proposals more drastic, than any put forward in this dialogue for their reform. 1 Starkey, Dialogue, 121, 125. 3 Ibid. 180-1.

1 Ibid. 140-5, 169. 4 Ibid. 187.

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Among the intellectual leaders of the country may fairly be counted the king. Recent historians, considering principally the omnicompetent activity of Cromwell, and the evidence both of Henry's distaste for paper work and his love of hunting, have perhaps allowed themselves to forget what a versatile and, within its limits of depth, what an admirable instrument the mind of the king was. As late as 1529, thirty years, that is, after his first visit to England, Erasmus is still speaking of Henry in terms of admiration only surpassed in warmth by his eulogies of More.1 Erasmus, no doubt, had his fair share of a client's tact and of sixteenth-century kingworship, but his phrases are precise and impressive. With all the wealth of documents that make up the story of the fateful 1530's, we are all but entirely in the dark as to what the king himself was reading and thinking, and what influences, other than those of passion and immediate policy, were working upon him to effect the great change in his religious outlook. But he, whose mind was so active, and so receptive of anything that chimed in with his personal designs and desires, cannot but have read the Adagia^ the Encomium Moriae, the Enchiridion and the Colloquia of Erasmus. That they had a decisive influence upon the direction of his plans need not for a moment be supposed. But that they supplied in part the categories of thought and expression that suited his interests well is more than possible. Henry, so apt at justifying all his actions to himself and to others, must have had some specious reasons with which to cover the crucial step that lay between the desire to mend, and the decision to end, monastic life in England. It may well have been that here again the egg laid by Erasmus proved, when hatched, to be a bird of another feather than that intended by the great humanist. 1 Ep. 2143 (Allen, vin, 129) of 1 April 1529 to John Cochlaeus: 'ingenium erat [jc.inthe youthful Henry] vividum, erectum et, ad quodcumque se vertisset, supra modum habile.. . . Dices ilium ad omnia natum.' The whole letter deserves study; and cf. epp. 855, 1342 (Allen, in, 356; v, 223).

CHAPTER XII

R E F O R M AND S U P P R E S S I O N U N D E R WOLSEY The suppression of the alien priories, which had been preceded by demands on the part of a small but fanatical minority for confiscations of a more comprehensive character, did not in the event point the way towards a more general dissolution. Such an end would not have appeared desirable, even if practically attainable, to Henry V or his son. It did, however, set a precedent of another kind by making lands and endowments available for royal and other colleges. Henceforward, prelates or kings who contemplated founding academic colleges or collegiate churches looked about for decayed monasteries within their jurisdiction whose revenues and lands might be transferred to what appeared to be more useful purposes, and it is not surprising, in view of the multitude of religious houses and the vicissitudes of the times, that they seldom looked in vain. The second half of the fifteenth century did not lack munificent bishops interested in foundations at Oxford and Cambridge: thus Waynflete of Winchester acquired for Magdalen College the decayed or derelict priory of Selborne in Hampshire and the whilom alien house of Sele in Sussex;1 at the end of the century Alcock of Ely suppressed the vanishing nunnery of St Radegund's at Cambridge, and converted it into Jesus College, while Smith of Lincoln transferred Cold Norton to his college of Brasenose at Oxford.2 At almost the same time Henry VII obtained bulls suppressing Mottisfont for the benefit of Windsor, and by uniting the priory of Luffield, a royal foundation, with Westminster rendered most of its revenues available for the same purpose.3 The procedure in all these cases was ostensibly canonical: after an enquiry in which the forms, at least, of impartial justice were observed, permission was obtained from Rome for suppression and transference, and though it is possible to see, in the causes and circumstances alleged, exaggerated or unfair charges not unlike those made later by Cromwell's visitors, no serious objection could be taken to the procedure. Later still, in 1524, Fisher of Rochester did not hesitate to obtain the decaying nunneries of Bromhall (Berkshire) and Higham or Lillechurch (Kent) for St John's College, Cambridge.4 Used thus with modera1 For Selborne, v. VCH, Hants, n, 179; for Sele, VCH, Sussex, 11, 62. Sele was later taken over by the Carmelites from Shoreham. 2 CPR, Henry VII\ 1494-1509, p. 72. 3 For Luffield, v. VCH, Northants, 11, 97. The king was patron of the house, which was dilapidated and contained only three monks. Compensation was given to Westminster, whither the monks were transferred. For Mottisfont, v. VCH, Hantsy 11,174. Here, however, the bull of suppression was not acted upon, and the house remained till the Dissolution. 4 For Bromhale, v. VCH, Berks, 11, 81; for Lillechurch, VCH, Kent, 11, 145-6, and Monasticon, iv, 379. At the latter house there were only three nuns, of questionable reputation, and the former, also reduced to three inmates, was in a state of decay. G. Baskerville, EM, 102—3, ls niisleading in his treatment of these wholly justified suppressions. Cf. his

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tion and discretion the practice of transferring to quasi-religious purposes revenues which had ceased, and could not easily again be adapted, to further the cause of regular monastic life might have proved a valuable means of shifting property from effete to vigorous institutions. It received, however, a somewhat new and sinister significance at the hands of Wolsey. The great cardinal, too often in the past regarded by historians wise after the event as a royal minister sui generis who opened the door inevitably to Caesaropapism, was in fact one of a group of eminent prelates in the Europe of that epoch who gained for a time an all but supreme control of the churches of their respective countries. The growth of national sentiment, the development of power and efficiency by the central government in Spain, France and England, and the simultaneous absorption of the papacy in the cares and struggles for its temporal dominions in Italy, led to a devolution by successive popes of all save the supreme jurisdiction in church matters to a single powerful ecclesiastic in the country concerned. Paradoxical as it may seem, history can show examples of secular monarchs, also, who have thus stretched their prerogative to the limit in order to devolve powers which they were too weak to exercise themselves. In the case of the eminent Observant friar, Francis Jimenes de Cisneros (1436-1517), in Spain, these powers were used for a strengthening of discipline and doctrine that was in time of the utmost value to the papal and Catholic cause; in France Georges d'Amboise (1460-1510), and in south Germany Cardinal Matthew Lang used their high position less purely, but with no immediate ill consequence for Rome. It was only in England that the characters of Wolsey, his king, and Wolsey's successor as chief minister combined to direct the use of similar powers to dissimilar purposes and with an issue very different. Wolsey had none of the spiritual qualities of a reformer, but when he became what his ablest biographer does not hesitate to call Prime Minister, 1 his energy and efficiency alike prompted him to reduce to better order the religious houses which must long since have appeared a fit subject for reform to his realist gaze. Here again he cannot have been ignorant of the labours of Jimenes in Spain, or of the movements, in part spontaneous and in part controlled, towards reform in the monasteries of France. 2 Any reform worth the name, however, manifestly needed to be directed by an authority regionally and personally universal, and for this a jurisdiction in all dioceses and over all the religious, including the exempt orders, was essential. Such jurisdiction, under the pope, belonged only to a legatus a latere with a permanent tenure of office; it is not surprising, therefore, to find the reform of the monasteries, exempt and non-exempt, specified in comment that 'the bishop's behaviour was no worse, but was certainly no better, than that of the King's visitors in a few years' time'. By a curious chance Fisher's bulls follow (24 September 1524) hard upon Wolsey's second bout of suppression (4 May 1524). 1 This is the title of ch. iv of A. F. Pollard's Wolsey. 2 For France, v. Imbart de la Tour, Les Origuies de la Reforme en France, vol. I.

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the bull of 27 August 1518, directed to the two cardinals only three months after Wolsey's appointment to a joint legacy with Campeggio. Ten months later a similar bull gave the same powers to Wolsey alone, and henceforth he enjoyed full legatine authority, though this did not of itself, without a special commission, give powers of visiting and reforming the exempt orders. These he obtained, finally and fully, by a bull of 24 August 1524.1 The first notable sign of his reforming activity is a long set of constitutions for the non-exempt Austin canons, given in March 1519, and intended to continue in force till the provincial chapter at Trinity, 1521. They were largely a reproduction of the Benedictine Constitutions of 1336, with a few additions.2 No meeting between Wolsey and the canons is recorded, but in the autumn of 15 21 the abbots and priors of the black monks were summoned to York Place on 12 November to discuss reform, and a provincial chapter was summoned to meet at Westminster at the end of the following February.3 No official account has survived of this November meeting but, according to Polydore Vergil, Wolsey rated the monks for their irregular lives and avarice, and by way of impressing the hesitant, proceeded straightway to visit the abbey of Westminster with a considerable parade of severity, which was only relaxed when sufficient cash was forthcoming.4 This account, though not wholly trustworthy, may well rest on a basis of fact; the cardinal's vexatious visitations provided an article for the charges brought against him after his fall.5 Before the Lent chapter took place, Wolsey sent round the monasteries a book of statutes which he proposed to enforce. It has been lost, but the regulations probably resembled the injunctions already given to the black canons. Whatever their nature, they were too much for the monks, and a letter exists in which they beg the cardinal to reconsider his proposals. The monks are so numerous, they say, that any attempt to effect a sudden return to the rigours of regular observance may produce widespread apostasy or rebellion, while recruits will be discouraged. Few nowadays wish for austerity, and if all the monasteries had to follow the rule of the Carthusians, the Bridgettines or the Observants they would soon be depopulated.6 The letter is interesting, both in its frank nonpos1 LP, 11, 4399 (27 August 1518); m, 475, 510, 557, 600, 647, 693; iv, 610, 697, 759. Cf. Rymer, Foedera, xiv, 15-18, 23. 2 They are in Wilkins, Concilia, ill, 683-8. 3 The dates and documents of this episode are in Pantin, MC, m, 117—24. 4 Anglica Historia, xxvii (ed. D. Hay, CS, 3 s., lxxiv), 258: 'Ut fidem verbis majorem habeant [monachi] ex improviso coenobium Westmonasterium adiit... intemperanterque omnia agit, miscet, turbat ut terreat caeteros, ut imperium ostentet, ut se terribiliorem praebeat.' 5 The twenty-fifth article dealt with this; others with the pillaging of monasteries (Pollard, Wolsey, 259). 6 MC, in, no. 283, pp. 123-4: 'In hac nostra tempestate [say the monks] mundo jam in suum finem declinante perpauci sint atque rarissimi qui vitae austeritatem et observanciam regularem cupiant.' It is interesting to note that the same three religious bodies are linked together for praise by Pole in his Pro ecclesiae imitate defensione (ed. 1536), 103.

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sumus and in its tribute, so soon to be endorsed in letters of blood, to the three families of religious that stood apart from the rest. There is no evidence that Wolsey attempted to enforce his statutes. He lacked entirely the ardour of a reformer, and he was too absorbed in personal and diplomatic interests to give even a statesman's attention to the matter. In no point is the contrast more strongly marked between him and Cardinal Richelieu a century later. He did, however, continue to make sporadic efforts by means of visitations conducted by commissaries, as at Wenlock in 1523 and Worcester in 1525. The surviving injunctions from Worcester are not remarkable for either severity or originality, but the lengthy injunctions and counsels given at Wenlock by the much-abused Dr Allen are unique for their date.1 In them, somewhat unexpectedly, the recent legatine statutes, which are the basis for some of the injunctions, are referred to as a desirable norm rather than a strict law of obligation. Meanwhile, Wolsey had been active in obtaining and exercising powers of visitation over the friars. The main bodies of the 'ordres foure' gave little trouble, but the new offshoot from the Minors, the Franciscan Observants, used more obstructive tactics. Noted as a body alike for their zeal and for their turbulence, and extremely influential at Rome, they did all they could to resist. On 7 July 1521, both the pope and Cardinal Quinones, the eminent general of the order, wrote to Wolsey begging him not to visit, and three weeks later Clerk, Wolsey's agent in Rome, wrote again, asserting that the pope had begged Wolsey 'for Goddes saake to use mercy with thois friars, sayeing that the be as desperatt bestes past shame, that can leese nothyng by clamours'.2 The Observants certainly proved themselves noisy enough, but the high esteem in which they were held, and to which both Clement VII and Quinones testified, make it reasonable to suppose that Clerk translated the pope's words somewhat freely to please Wolsey, unless, indeed, they are thought to voice the impatience of a weak man bullied by the English diplomat and caught, here as elsewhere, between the upper and nether millstone. In any case, Wolsey waited more than two years before visiting the Observants; the friars proved true to their reputation, and the arrival of his commissaries was the signal for the exit of nineteen intransigents; the visitation was adjourned, and the popular preacher, Friar John Forest, was put up to anathematize the truants, some of whom returned and were clapped into the prison of the porter's lodge at York Housed 1 For these, v. supra, pp. 82-3. TheWorcester articles are in' The Visitations and Injunctions of Cardinal Wolsey', ed. J. M. Wilson; those of Wenlock are in English Ecclesiastical Studies, by R. Graham, 139-44. The novellae constitutiones legatinae are referred to among the consilia et exhortaciones on a point that had been law from the time of monastic origins, viz. the prohibition of a money salary to monks. 2 LP, iv (i), 477-8 (7 July, letters of Pope and Cardinal); 1521 (28 July, Clerk to Wolsey). 3 The episode is noted by Hall, Chronicle, ed. C. Whibley, 11, 26 (February 1524), and Grey Friars Chronicle (in Monumenta Franciscana, RS, 4), 11, 190 (16 January 1524). The

Observants later became known in government circles by die cant name of Friars Obstinates.

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That Wolsey's projects of reform had no foundation of spirituality is shown clearly by his more personal contact with the religious. His well organized staff of commissaries took cognizance of all the external relations of the monasteries. Abbots and priors were deprived or impelled to resign, often unjustly, and whenever vacancies occurred the cardinal's habitual practice was to induce the community to entrust the election to himself.1 In almost every case, to judge from surviving records, the favoured candidate was expected to make a handsome contribution towards Wolsey's colleges or other interests, and from 1522 the cardinal permitted himself to hold in commendam the abbacy of St Albans, one of the two or three richest in England.2 It was an abuse hitherto almost unknown in this country. Demands for contributions towards his expenses were frequently received by the wealthier houses, and the need for his favour forced compliance. It should be said, however, that his appointments often strengthened the regular life of an abbey, and it seems clear that he, and not Henry, was on the side of the angels in the case of the Wilton election.3 Wolsey's personal interests, which influenced so many of his dealings with the religious, were the chief motive also of his entry upon a course of suppression hitherto without parallel. Between 1524 and his fall in 1529 a stream of bulls and royal writs authorized the disappearance of some twenty-nine houses of monks and canons and nuns.4 The series began when St Frideswide's in Oxford was suppressed in order to make way for Wolsey's college, and later in the same year this permission was confirmed and authorization given for the annexation to the college of other small monasteries to the same aggregate value of three thousand ducats. 5 The suppressions actually carried out were in value many times greater than the sum allowed. One of the charges against the fallen cardinal was of having suppressed monasteries uncanonically,6 and as no further bull is discoverable before 1528 it must be presumed that Wolsey acted as if the papal grant had given him carte blanche. In all, between April 1524 and December 1525, some twenty monasteries were suppressed in addition to St Frideswide's, and their revenues transferred to Wolsey's college at Oxford. The houses thus eliminated, modestly described by the cardinal as 'certain exile and small monasteries', were certainly not among the 1 This was another of the charges against Wolsey; cf. Pollard, Wolsey, 259, and ibid. 200-4, for many instances of high-handed behaviour and bribery. 2 Rymer, Foedera, xm, 775 (8 November). 3 A number of writers, including Pollard, Wolsey, 202—4, have been misled in this somewhat complicated business by the king's letters, which are a good example of Henry's skill in throwing a screen over his own very questionable conduct by an assumption of righteous indignation expressed in pious reproof. For the actual sequence of events, v. article by the present writer, '"The Matter of Wilton" in 1528'. 4 Incomplete lists are given in Gairdner, The English Church, 1509-58, 419, and there are others in LP, but discrepancies between papal bulls and royal letters patent, together with obvious clerical errors and misspellings, make it difficult to attain complete accuracy. For a list with dates, v. Appendix 11, infra. For the acts of dissolution, v. LP, iv (i), 1137. 5 Rymer, Foedera, XIv, 23. 6 Lord Herbert, Henry VIII, 411; abridged in LP, iv, iii, 6075. KROIII

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greatest in the land, but in the aggregate they yielded a sizable net income of about £1800, which was approximately the income of Abingdon, one of the wealthier (though by no means the wealthiest) of the contemporary abbeys. More than half this sum came from four houses; the average income of the remainder was a little less than £50. The total number of monks, canons and nuns concerned was probably less than eighty, that is, a little more than the contemporary community of Christ Church, Canterbury, so that the whole transaction was equivalent to the suppression of a single great abbey. As only four of the houses concerned had a community of eight or more, and several had three or less, Wolsey's further statement that * neither God was served, nor religion kept' in them may probably be accepted as reliable. Recent writers by drawing attention to the four or five larger houses among the twenty, have questioned the customary assumption that all these monasteries were ciphers in the religious world.1 It is true that five had an income well over £100, but St Frideswide's, which alone had a fair-sized community, stood apart from the rest as forming the material nucleus of the new college; the four others, Bayham, Daventry, Lesnes and Tonbridge, had communities of ten or less and might reasonably be considered as decayed, though it is not possible to discover why Wolsey's eye fell upon these individuals among all the houses of England. It is perhaps noteworthy that the only public protests recorded were concerned with two of this group. The fate of Daventry is hard to account for; it had an income greater even than St Frideswide's and in a recent visitation it had seemed to be tolerably observant. Possibly the disproportion between income and inhabitants attracted Wolsey's attention to a friendless house. The strong personal bias behind these suppressions, together with the cardinal's arbitrary and sometimes uncanonical actions and the violent and rapacious behaviour of his agents evoked numerous protests.2 At Tonbridge the townsmen petitioned for a continuance of the priory, which they preferred to the promise of a school with scholarships at Cardinal College,3 and at Bayham in Sussex gentlemen of the neighbourhood assembled in disguise and reinstated the canons for a time,4 while complaints against Dr Allen, Wolsey's chief agent, and against Cromwell, reached the king from all sides, and were passed back to Wolsey by More.5 1 G. Baskerville, EM, 104—5. 2 Cf. the entry in the Chronicle of the biased Hall (11, 31-2, March 1524): 'Wherefore sodainly he entered. . . into the saied houses, put out the Religious and tooke all their goodes, moveables and scarcely gave to the poore wretches any thyng, except it were to .the heddes of the house.' 3 For Tonbridge, v. LP, iv (i), 1470—i (2 and 3 July 1525), where Warham is found disclaiming any share in the protest. Cf. LP, iv, 4920. 4 LP, iv (i), 1397; Ellis, OL, in (ii), cxlv. 5 E.g., LP, iv (ii), 3360 (19 August 1527), where Knight writes to Wolsey: 'I have heard the King and noblemen speak things incredible of the acts of Dr Aleyn and Cromwell', and Ellis, OL, 11 (ii), xcix ( = State Papers, 1, 154). For Henry's criticisms, v. his letter in LP, iv (ii), 4507 (14 July 1528).

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Undeterred, the cardinal continued on his course, and after an interval of three years November 1528 saw the issue of two bulls, the one authorizing the suppression of monasteries with less than six inmates to the value of eight thousand ducats, the other allowing for the union of monasteries and nunneries with less than twelve religious with larger houses. A second bull of the same tenor reached Wolsey at the end of August 1529.1 The first of the earlier bulls seems to have been directed towards the financing of the cardinal's college at Ipswich; the others were perhaps part of a wider policy. Acting on these Wolsey proceeded against seven small houses. Three were dependencies and were merged in the houses to which they belonged; the others were liquidated save for one, which for some reason escaped the cardinal's hands only to fall into those of the local landowner a few months later. In all these the total amount of income actually confiscated was probably less than £200 and the number of religious concerned only twenty-five. We must therefore suppose either that the wide powers given by the bulls of 1528 were never used, or that they were intended by Wolsey to afford tardy confirmation of what he had already achieved uncanonically. It is noteworthy that according to the terms of one of these later bulls the suppressions were to be made in favour of Windsor and King's College.2 Whether or not his was a move on the part of the king to follow Wolsey's suit in the interest of royal foundations, it was not in fact effective. Throughout the business of suppression Wolsey employed a group of able, overbearing and unscrupulous agents who applied in varying degrees the violent and dishonest methods later used on a larger scale under the direction of the cardinal's trusted officer, Thomas Cromwell. The religious were either turned out without ceremony or were persuaded to endorse a form of surrender admitting their faults; the necessary inquests were then held, and it was found that the religious had voluntarily forsaken their house which duly escheated to the king, who could be claimed as founder of a large number of monasteries on very dubious grounds.3 The inmates were given their choice between transference to another house or return to secular life (presumably with a legatine dispensation) assisted by a small sum of money. The buildings were then rifled, dismantled or converted just as were those of their fellows ten years later. Wolsey had thus, at the time of his fall, carried his dealings with the monasteries to the precise point that had been reached in his broader 1 Rymer, Foedera, xiv, 270-2, 272-3, 345. 2 Ibid. 270-2. At that date the Cambridge college must be meant. 3 When property escheated or fell in any way to the Crown the verdict of a local jury as to the facts—technically known as an' office'—was legally requisite {Statutes of the Realm, n, 252, 306, i.e. 8 Hen. vi, c. 16 and 18 Hen. vi, c. 6) as a solemn act of record. One of the charges against Wolsey was that he obtained these by collusive methods; cf. Hall Chronicle, II, 32: 'Then he caused thexceter [the escheator] to sit and to find the houses voyde, as relynquished, and founde the kyng founder, where other men were founders', etc.

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ecclesiastical policy. While remaining technically and indeed sincerely within the limits of orthodoxy and a rather loose canonical practice, he had collected into his hands all the strands of power and had perfected a technique of destruction which might well have perished with its creator, but which was in fact inherited by an agent bound by no ties of education or of caste or of ambition to the law and tradition of a centralized church. Towards the end of his career of spoliation the cardinal, as general overseer of the Church in England, was maturing a scheme of a totally different character. This was a project to create an unspecified number of new bishoprics out of the confiscated revenues of an equal number of abbeys. The church was to be used as a cathedral, and the monks were to be retained either as a monastic chapter or as a body of secular canons. Monastic chapters were, of course, as old as the English monastic order, and more than one abbey had in the past been converted into a cathedral. A wholesale reshuffle of the kind proposed was, however, something novel, and still more strange was the acquiescence by Rome itself in the proposal that monks should change their profession for the less exacting status of secular canons. In the first bull Clement VII, voicing the feeling of his cardinals, refused permission to act and did no more than authorize Wolsey and Campeggio to make investigations and submit proposals; in the second, six months later, he gave permission for the transformation and allowed the legates, pro hac vice tantum^ to appoint the reigning abbots or others as bishops.1 It was, however, too late. Campeggio was leaving England and for Wolsey, also, the sands were running out. The scheme was shelved, to be revived and partially implemented eight years later. 1 A bull of 12 November 1528 authorized Wolsey and Campeggio to make enquiries as to the procedure followed in the past when new monastic chapters were created by suppressing abbeys (Rymer, Foedera, xiv, 273—5); that of 29 May 1529 (ibid. 291—4 and LPt iv (iii), 5607—8), repeating the order for careful enquiry, gave the definite permission to erect new sees with the arrangements noted in the text (i.e. the monks could become secular canons salvis tribus votis substantialibus).

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CHAPTER XIII

EUROPEAN P R E C E D E N T S English historians in the past, and indeed all writers who have touched upon the subject, have tended to treat the suppression of the English and Welsh monasteries as a purely domestic affair, conducted in an insulated area, and brought about solely by causes to be found in the remote or immediate past history of the country. This may be, on a wide view, a true judgment. It is, however, possible that recent writings and events in other countries of Europe had their effect upon English opinion and royal policy: books, travellers and diplomatic agents kept government in touch with the foreign scene. In any case, the suppression of the religious life in England loses all historical context unless it is seen as an act in a great drama that was being played all over Europe. We have seen in the preceding chapter how pervasive were the raillery and criticism of Erasmus, atfirstin humanistic circles only, but later among all those of the New Learning, until finally the Erasmian strictures on the religious life became part of the stock-in-trade of all those hostile to the old religion. This attitude of sarcastic or caustic mockery had already become a characteristic of the mental climate in educated Europe when it was adopted and intensified by Luther, who made of the pleas and suggestions of the humanist an immediate and burning practical issue. Luther, himself an Augustinian friar, remained for some years after his first public outburst without renouncing his own profession or attacking the theological principles upon which it rested. In 1521, however, when in the Wartburg, he composed and sent to Wittenberg a number of theses directed against monasticism.1 His attack was based on two of his main assumptions: that salvation was to be found in faith alone, and not in works; and that liberty was the birthright and hall-mark of a Christian. The monastic ideal, in his view, rested upon an unwarranted distinction between the counsels and commandments of Christ; the religious relied on his Rule and works of piety or penance, and he neglected the service of his fellow-men in a selfish quest of personal perfection and salvation. Luther was still prepared to allow those who did not trust in works to continue in their monastic life, and he himself did not as yet propose to dispense himself from the vow which to him was always the religious vow par excellence^ that of chastity, but perpetual vows were in his view unlawful, as alienating the Christian's inalienable birthright of spiritual liberty. Luther always moved rapidly, without ever feeling the need for consistency, and within a few months he had developed his opinions very considerably. In the autumn of 15 21 he wrote his treatise De votis I For these, v. J. Mackinnon, Luther and the Reformation (London, 1929), in, 22-34.

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monasticis, which in after days he considered the most powerful and irrefutable of all his writings. It had indeed an immediate, an immense, and a lasting influence, and though there was little in it that had not been said before by Wyclifhtes, Hussites and others, the various arguments were powerfully massed and pungently expressed, and very little has been added in the centuries that have since elapsed to the case against monasticism and the scriptural anthology in support of it which Luther now brought forward.2 The monk relies on practices and Rules, thus becoming a Jew, if not a Manichee; he thus goes clean against the apostle's law of liberty. Moreover, his vaunted poverty is actually a sham and his profession of chastity quite unavailing to preserve the virtue. The true Christian life consists of active works of mercy, not in wearing a cowl, shaving the head, scourging oneself, fasting and repeating sets of prayers. Luther is now ready to absolve monks as well as secular priests from their vows: the vow of chastity, in fact, is invalid from the start, as being in most cases a promise of the impossible and in all cases derogating from Christian liberty. This pronouncement of Luther suited well with current sentiment. At a special chapter of the Augustinian Friars, summoned at Wittenberg in the same year, the assembled fathers, guided solely, as they declared, by Scripture and not by human traditions, and convinced that all that is not of faith is sin, proclaimed that all those under vows were completely free to choose their future state. At the convent of Wittenberg itself all the members save the prior took advantage of the freedom thus asserted. Luther's pronouncements on the religious life and monastic ideal were not long in finding a sympathetic reception in the northern kingdoms.3 In Denmark King Christian II was already interested in the teaching of the Reformers, and his policy was continued by his successor Frederick I (1523-33). During the reign of this monarch occurred the crucial action which, followed by the Ecclesiastical Appointments Act of 1534, severed the administrative and disciplinary links between the Danish Church and Rome without as yet making any formal repudiation of papal authority as such or any change of doctrine. The occasion was the Diet or meeting of the Rigsraad at Odensee in 1526, where papal confirmation and papal receipt of fees for newly elected bishops were abolished. ' Freedom of conscience' was proclaimed in 1527, while in the matter of the vow of chastity and the equivalent undertaking by all in major orders, the Diet 1 Werke, ed. Weimar, vin, 573-669. 2 E. de Moreau, however, remarks (Histoire de I'Eglise, ed. Fliche et Martin, xvi, 92 (1950)): 'Malgre les jugements contraires, cet ouvrage nous parait, en beaucoup d'endroits, d'une insigne faiblesse.' 3 There is no completely satisfactory and detailed account of the origin of the Reform in Scandinavia by a German, French or English scholar. In what follows, the account in vol. 11 of the Cambridge Modern History, E. H. Dunkley, The Reformation in Denmark, J. Wordsworth, The National Church of Sweden, J. G. H. Hoffmann, La Reforme en Suede, and H. F. Holmquist, Die schwedische Reformation, have been used.

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allowed all spiritual persons, including religious, to choose between marriage and celibacy.1 The mendicant orders were prominent in Denmark, and more in view than the relatively few abbeys; the Carmelites in particular counted many men of ability and influence, who were in the event to join the Reform and occupy official positions in the Church. They were on the whole unpopular on account of their considerable wealth. In Scania, the southern part of modern Sweden which was then directly governed by the king of Denmark, monastic houses were of greater significance, and their lands were coveted by the nobles. The Diet of Odensee and the king's action effected the confiscation of some fifteen Franciscan houses between 1528 and 1532, but the other religious continued for a time, and it was only under the next king, Christian III (1536-59), that further steps were taken. In 1537 a Church Ordinance forbade the mendicants to preach, beg or hear confessions. Other religious were allowed to leave their houses at will, and the property so abandoned was taken over by the Crown.2 In the sequel the orders of friars rapidly disintegrated, but the Cistercian houses continued to exist for some decades, not becoming extinct till c. 1580.

In the kingdom of Sweden the pattern of change was different. Religious houses were not numerous in comparison with those of England or France, but the number of religious probably bore an equal proportion to the total population, and their proportionate wealth was even greater. Friaries existed only in Stockholm and a few other towns, but there were a number of large Cistercian and Premonstratensian abbeys, two important Bridgettine houses, and a recently founded Charterhouse, that of Mariefred, which had received royal endowment. Taken as a whole the monks and canons, like the small group of bishops, were very wealthy landowners, and Gustavus Vasa is recorded as saying in 1527 that the lands of the Crown and nobility together did not equal a third part of the possessions of the Church. The religious had, besides, with the bishops, great social and jurisdictional power as 'feudal' magnates.3 On the other hand, there was less animus against the religious and less desire for religious change in Sweden than in Denmark, and had the political situation been stable it is possible that Sweden, like Ireland, would have taken no initiative in the direction of the Reform. It so happened, however, that Sweden was at a crisis of her national history. The union of Kalmar of 1397, by which the three Scandinavian kingdoms had been united under one elective Crown, had been in abeyance at the middle of the fifteenth century and again from 1471 onwards, and 1 For what follows, v. B. J. Kidd, Documents of the Continental Reformation (Oxford, 1911), 233-4. 2 Kidd, op. cit. 327. 3 Feudalism of the Carolingian or Norman types had never been established in Sweden, but by the fifteenth century the great landowners had come to occupy much the same social position as their English contemporaries.

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the country was governed by members of an elected royal family, calling themselves sometimes king and sometimes regent. All administrative power in the country, save in the city of Stockholm, was in fact in the hands of the nobles and the relatively small group of landholding bishops. A change came with the accession of the energetic Christian II to the throne of Denmark in 1513. He resolved to make the union of the three kingdoms a reality. Sweden was divided between two parties, that of Sten Sture the younger, the representative of the national royal family, and that of Gustaf Trolle, archbishop of Upsala, who was recognized as administrator by a group favouring close union with Denmark. In the confused disturbances that followed, Sten Sture, who had had the better of the struggle, deposed and imprisoned the archbishop, who appealed to Denmark for help and succeeded in obtaining papal confirmation of the excommunication of his rival, Sten Sture, by the archbishop of Trondhjem who claimed metropolitan powers. Christian II thereupon, being violent and ambitious, set out to gain control of Sweden, identifying himself with the cause of Gustaf Trolle and papal jurisdiction. He defeated and mortally wounded Sten Sture and was crowned king of Sweden at Stockholm on 4 November 1520. A few days later he took treacherous and terrible vengeance on the opponents of Archbishop Trolle in the series of summary executions known to history as the Stockholm bloodbath. Though in fact wholly personal and political, the massacre was conducted on the pretext that those who had deposed Trolle were guilty of rebellion against the pope and had ignored the papal excommunication. Thus, at this fateful moment of Swedish history, the papacy was identified in the minds of all both with a great crime and with the cause of Denmark, the enemy of national aspirations. The cause of traditional religion was further weakened, as it was later weakened in England, by the vacancy of several sees owing to the Stockholm murders. It was at this juncture that a national leader of genius appeared in the person of Gustaf Eriksson, better known as Gustavus Vasa. Gustavus was one more of that group of young and gifted rulers whom destiny had called to decide what was to be the path to be chosen by a Europe at the crossways. Born in 1496 and thus five years younger than Henry VIII, he had served as a young soldier under Sten Sture, and after his death had endured a period of wandering and adventure in his native province of Dalecarlia, thus becoming afigureof legend in Swedish history comparable to Alfred the Great or the Young Pretender. Finally, collecting a band of his dalesmen he began a campaign of guerrilla warfare which ended in 1523 with the capture of Stockholm and Kalmar and the election of the young leader as king. The new ruler had at first no intention of changing the religion of the country though, as a young, clearsighted and efficient autocrat, he was prepared for drastic reforms. A friendly papal legate of native birth, John Magnusson, was in the country, and he was soon elected archbishop of Upsala in place of the exiled Trolle, though his position was not regular-

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ized at Rome till he himself was an exile in turn. Meanwhile, the outstanding man in the Swedish Church was the orthodox and patriotic Brask of Linkoping. Gustavus demanded heavy loans from the clergy, and confiscated the recent royal benefaction of Gripsholm, which had been given to the Charterhouse of Mariefred, but took no further revolutionary step for the moment. Lutheranism, however, had begun to enter the country, with the great reformer Olaus Petri (Olaf Petersen), as its spokesman, and made rapid progress among the educated. Gustavus began to favour the new opinions and to countenance clerical marriages, that of Petersen among others; at the same time he harassed the monasteries by quartering troops upon them, by getting control of their affairs, and by finding legal pretexts for reclaiming lands given them by his ancestors. Finally, in 1527, a Diet was summoned to Vaster as in June 1527 to discuss points of theology, including the papal claims. The constitution of this gathering was novel, and the four remaining bishops, whose order had always previously sat next to the king, were degraded to lower seats; by way of riposte they drew up a protest against Lutheranism and asserted the authority of the pope. The Diet was then asked by the king to provide a larger revenue, which was undoubtedly needed, and church property was indicated as a source. Brask, speaking for the bishops, maintained a firm refusal to spoliation and was supported by others in the Diet. Gustavus then passionately declared that he would lay down the crown unless he was given what he asked, and left the assembly, which after three days of deliberation recalled him and promised obedience to all he might demand. A few days later, at the dictation of the king, the celebrated decrees known as the Recess of Vasteras were promulgated.1 Among these decrees were some touching the religious orders. All ecclesiastical property deemed by the king superfluous to the needs of the religious was to be handed over to him. All land of the kind that was exempt from taxes (the equivalent of that in England given in frankalmoin), bestowed since 1454, was to be returned to the families of the donors. All taxable land whatsoever was to be returned, with no retrospective timelimit. A few days later further ordinances were passed: no prelates were to be appointed without royal confirmation, and various items of the Lutheran programme were introduced, including the surveillance of monks by the civil authority. The aged Brask, despairing of the republic, joined the exiled Archbishop Magnusson at Danzig; new bishops were consecrated by command of the king; the monasteries lost most of their property and many ceased to exist. There was, however, no direct persecution or imposition of oaths as in England, nor was there a wholesale suppression. Instead, the monasteries gradually and one by one became extinct. The Bridgettine nunneries, which more than any other houses were regarded as a national institution, were pensioned by the king and were the last to disappear, half a century after the crowning of Gustavus Vasa. 1 Kidd, op. cit. 234-6.

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The attack on the monastic and mendicant orders, which in Scandinavia was primarily inspired by economic motives and conducted by the king for his own benefit or that of the nobility, was launched almost simultaneously in Switzerland by democratic or oligarchic public authority desiring to implement the programme of a religious reform. Thus, in the last month of 1524, the Council of Zurich dissolved the religious houses in their territory, devoting their revenues to education or the relief of the poor. The procedure anticipated in many respects that later adopted by the king of England, as when in 1523 nuns were given permission to marry. A year later, in December 15 24, we find the abbess of our Lady's Minster offering to surrender her convent under her seal and hand, on the understanding that she might remain there, well-found, for life.1 At the same time the friars were offered the choice of leaving the order to learn a trade, those who had brought possessions with them to the convent being allowed to remove them, and those in need being given public assistance till they were self-supporting. Those who wished to remain were, for the time being, gathered into the Carmelite friary, where they were provided for. Naturally, all soon disappeared into the citizen body or went into exile. A little later in 1530, the Council of Zurich, supporting Vadianus and the local town council, took the opportunity during a vacancy to seize and secularize the ancient abbey of St Gall.2 Basel accepted the Reform fully and with all its corollaries in 1529; Geneva did not expel its religious, and then only with some regret, till 1530.3 While the suppression of the religious life in Switzerland was more drastic, and the course of events there probably more widely known in England than the gradual and less catastrophic events in Scandinavia, the Swiss proceedings, which were unmistakably the translation into action of the doctrines of Luther and Zwingli, could in England be openly approved only by those of Lutheran sympathies. The Danish and Swedish events, on the other hand, could provide valuable practical lessons to a monarch more concerned with financial gain than with doctrinal reform. Whether Henry VIII was in any way stimulated or guided by the actions of the king of Denmark and Gustavus Vasa cannot be decided, but it is at least certain that an influence from the north upon England is chronologically admissible. The events in Sweden and Denmark bear a remarkable resemblance to those in England eight or ten years later, if allowance is made for the disturbing influence of Henry's divorce suit, for the greater efficiency of a long-established central government controlled by Thomas Cromwell, and for the far greater numbers, both of religious and of educated men, in England. No doubt some of the similarity is due to the racial and therefore the psychological kinship between Englishmen and Scandinavians. The relative lack of contacts between the countries in modern times, and close relations with France, Germany and the Englishspeaking lands overseas, has obscured for most Englishmen their close 1 Kidd, op. cit. 441, 443.

2 Ibid. 468.

3 Ibid. 501, 516-17.

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kinship with Denmark and Sweden. Nevertheless, it is a noteworthy fact that the Scandinavian way of life and the reaction to new political and social demands are closer to our own than are those of any other European nation. For this reason it would not be strange to find that the Scandinavian behaviour at a time of national revival and religious change resembled that of England. It is, however, difficult to prove that news of Swedish or Danish happenings penetrated to England. There is no trace in the papers of the time of a diplomatic representative of England at Stockholm. Nevertheless, the agents of Wolsey and Cromwell were in Hamburg and other German ports, and it is difficult to suppose that they or their royal master remained wholly ignorant of what was happening in the northern kingdoms. Any such knowledge would have served to give them confidence and perhaps even to suggest lines of policy when an attack on the monasteries was first envisaged. Certainly, there was by 1533—4 no lack of recent and attractive precedent, no lack of trenchant arguments, for a monarch who wished to better himself at the expense of the Church and to acquire the property of the religious without incurring the odium of sacrilege. The precedents hitherto considered had been set by reformers or despoilers who had no scruples in breaking with the past and in destroying venerable institutions. This section may perhaps be ended appropriately with mention of a group of reformers who, though entirely orthodox of belief and without a thought of violent or lucrative action, produced a document that even now startles us with its drastic recommendations. The historian when he contemplates it must feel anew the difficulty of recapturing the thoughts of a past age. At the very moment when the lesser monasteries of England were disappearing, when such of the Carthusians as had not been done to death were being driven into schism or heresy, and when the Pilgrims of Grace were hazarding their lives in protest against the suppression, a group of earnest ecclesiastics in Rome were presenting the Farnese Pope Paul III with a report that pilloried the decadence of many of the religious orders in Italy and suggested the wholesale abolition of numerous branches of the great orders. The report,1 as a spring of action, was strangled at birth by the protests of interested 1 The report, the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia, presented (9 March 1537) by the papal commission of reform, which included among its members Cardinals Contarini, Caraffa, Sadoleto and Pole (it is printed by Kidd, Documents of the Continental Reformation, 307—18), recommended that all the Conventual orders' be allowed to die out and be forbidden to receive novices ('conventuales ordines abolendos esse putamus omnes'). This recommendation is referred to in somewhat ambiguous terms by Pastor, History of the Popes, Eng. trans, xi, 165 seqq. It would seem to refer to the' conventual' branches of the orders of friars. The report was strictly confidential and its publication was never intended, but it speedily became common property. Several of the members—Caraffa, for example, and Pole himself—were by temperament vehement and drastic, particularly in these, their early years, and it is probable that they intended their suggestions to have a strong galvanic action rather than to serve as a considered programme. Later, when CarafFa became Paul IV, he placed the report on the Index (1555). C£ H. Jedin, The Council of Trent, Eng. trans.

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parties, by political manoeuvre, and by the inertia of the pope; its unauthorized publication raised a gale of satire and criticism in central Europe and its effect for speeding the cause of reform was virtually nil. Appearing as it did in 1537 it could have had no effect on opinion in England in 1535, and there is no evidence that it made any impact at all in this country. It is nevertheless well to bear it in mind, for it shows how deeply the need for reform had been felt by the most serious and forwardlooking minds even in Rome itself; it shows also, more clearly than any other episode, the 'double time', as of different ages or worlds, that existed simultaneously in the Europe of these decades. The one, urgent and swift-moving, was the time of Luther and Cromwell; the other, slow, almost stationary, was that of the pre-Tridentine Roman Curia and of the romance lands in general, who pursued their own policies unaware of the chasm in the religious world that was opening at their feet.

173 CHAPTER XIV

A C C E P T A N C E OF T H E ROYAL SUPREMACY With the disgrace and death of Wolsey there began, for the Church in England, a period of stress and revolution without parallel in the past. Though the waters of domestic discontent and imported revolution had, throughout the cardinal's long lease of power, been mounting against the dykes, and far-sighted observers had long been anticipating a catastrophe, no one dared to prophesy what form it would take. No mortal prevision, indeed, could possibly have embraced those two imponderable forces, the will of the king and the genius of his new minister, which gave to events in the decade 15 30-40 the particular impulse which determined their direction. Throughout the changes of those years, in which there occurred a breathless sequence of events so pregnant with consequence, we are here concerned solely with the attitude and behaviour of the religious. To what extent was their conduct in the supreme crisis from the autumn of 1535 to the end of 1539 predetermined, or at least predisposed, by their action in earlier years? To answer this question it is necessary to begin our review some months before the death of the cardinal. The precise degree of causal relationship between the king's 'great matter' of the divorce and the subsequent ecclesiastical revolution has always been a controversial topic, but it can at least be said that some relationship of cause and effect existed. Almost equally impatient of solution is the allied problem as to the connection in the minds and conduct of individuals between disapproval of the king's matrimonial designs and disapproval of his rejection of papal supremacy, for it was not until the second half of 1533 that the two issues were in fact fused by the papal condemnation of the Boleyn marriage. Two observations, however, seem to be justified: the one is, that generally speaking those who are known to have acted or pronounced in a public way in favour of Queen Katharine are found also to have made at least the beginning of a protest against the royal supremacy, and vice versa; the other is, that the royal supremacy was used as a principal means of clinching and compelling adhesion to the validity and consequences of the Boleyn marriage. It may be added that Henry never forgot or forgave those who had pertinaciously defended the validity of his marriage with Katharine.1 It would, however, be a mistake to assume, with some historians, that an intelligent individual's decision 1 No one knew this better than Sir Thomas More. Although he died, as he said on the scaffold, 'in and for the faith of the Holy Catholic Church', he could also say, immediately before the verdict was pronounced against him at his trial: ' It is not for this Supremacy so much that ye seek my blood, as for that I would not condescend to the marriage' (Harpsfield, The Life and Death of Sir Thomas More, 196).

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on the divorce suit was based merely on a technical, or alternatively on an emotional, judgment, as it would also be untrue to say that the severe treatment meted out to opponents of the supremacy was little more than delayed punishment for opposition to the divorce. The fact that the solemn recognition of the royal supremacy, accompanied by a repudiation of all papal jurisdiction, was a denial of accepted Catholic teaching, whereas assertion of the validity of the Aragon marriage was a personal, private expression of opinion on what was ostensibly an open legal issue, does not in truth differentiate the issues as completely as might be thought. In the last resort, when emotions had passed and canonists had said their say, even before the final papal decision, judgment on the divorce question was a moral one, resting upon assessments of the honesty and veracity of the queen, of the sincerity and reliability of Henry, and upon the whole deep Christian issue of the lawfulness of a man's ruining the life of his putative wife and daughter for motives which might well appear base or at best mere worldly expediency. To pass such a judgment, and to abide by it, needed both clear insight and high moral qualities; the same qualities were needed still more urgently in one who proposed to take his stand against the royal supremacy. Similarly, when More, with his clear mind and careful judgment, said at the end of his trial that this was the final outcome of a pursuit which began when he opposed the king over the divorce, he was speaking of what he knew of the king's character, not of the intrinsic connection between issues. The test of the Oath of Succession or of the denial of papal supremacy was not a device to ruin the opponents of the Boleyn marriage only, but a means of eliminating opposition of any kind. Thus in spite of the clear distinction between the two questions, each was in a sense a religious issue, decided in large part by an awareness of spiritual motives, and though it was some years before the causal connection between the two decisions became clear, to take the king's part in the divorce suit was in fact to set one's foot upon a slope where it became ever more difficult to call a halt or to retrace one's steps. In the summer of 1530, when Wolsey was already in disgrace and the divorce suit appeared to have reached a complete deadlock, the king decided to promote a letter to the pope in support of his case, signed by a number of spiritual and temporal lords, but not in any sense appearing as a memorandum of parliament. Some of the signatures were obtained at a meeting summoned by the king, others by commissioners sent into the country for that purpose. The text of the letter, after rehearsing the unity between head and members of the nation in England, and the difficulties and future disasters likely to occur in a kingdom without an heir male, went on to beg the pope to grant the king's request. The most significant part, however, is the hardly disguised threat of direct action if the request is not granted. * If the pope is unwilling', the writers say, * . . . we are left to look after ourselves, and to find a remedy for ourselves elsewhere... if Your Holiness does not grant our request... our state will

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certainly be an unhappy o n e . . . but not altogether without remedy... some remedies are indeed extreme ones, but a sick man seeks relief in any way he can find/ 1 The pope, in his carefully worded reply, made it clear that he had taken the point.2 This letter received relatively few signatures. Wolsey, newly arrived in the diocese which he had not visited previously in his sixteen years' tenure of the see, would doubtless have signed any letter the king put before him; Warham may have been asked in the royal presence. Besides these two, only four bishops signed, of whom Longland of Lincoln is the single notable name. This, however, gives considerable significance to the signatures of the abbots, twenty-two in all, and all drawn from the group of parliamentary prelates. Though the letter contained no denial or limitation of papal jurisdiction, it nevertheless held a language which was, as the technical phrase of later days had it, 'offensive to pious ears'. Moreover, the signatories, whether they realized it or not, had taken a step, which it would not have been easy to retrace, along the road of submission to the king. In view of later events, it is worth noting that the abbots of Glastonbury and Reading were signatories.3 In the years that followed, the monks and canons were implicated, however unwillingly or mechanically, in all the stages of the ecclesiastical revolution, for their prelates, the personae of their houses, were all members of Convocation, and twenty-six black monk abbots, one cathedral prior (of Coventry) and two abbots of the Austin canons were members o£ the House of Lords. As regards the latter, we have direct information of the share taken by individuals, for the extant journals of the House of Lords begin in 1533; as regards the former, we have no exact figures of attendance, but all abbots and priors of independent houses were summoned to attend the Upper House of Convocation in either the northern or the southern province. Nunneries were not represented, and the Carthusian priors were by custom not cited; the mendicants also were out of the reckoning. With these exceptions, the religious superiors were all members of one at least of the two legislatures of medieval England. As such, those who attended took part, no doubt as a rule formally and almost automatically, in the series of momentous acts and decisions that marked the five years following Wolsey's death. On 7 February 1531 they were of the Convocation that acknowledged the king as Supreme Head, 'so far as the law of Christ allowed', and on 15 May 1532, by the agreement known as the Submission of the Clergy, they abandoned their right of independence in legislating for the Church. In the session of parliament beginning on 4 February 1533 the Act for Restraint of Appeals was passed, issuing in a statute which has been 1 N. Pocock, Records of the Reformation; the divorce, 1527—33, J> 429—32. 2 Ibid. 434-7. 3 The others were Westminster (Islip), Gloucester, Abingdon, York, Peterborough, Ramsey, Croyland, Thorney, Selby, Bardney, Holme, Hyde, Evesham (Lichfield), Malmesbury, Winchcombe (Kidderminster), Tewkesbury, Waltham and Cirencester.

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characterized as 'the most important in [English] constitutional history of the sixteenth century, if not of any century'.1 Shortly after, Convocation was asked to pronounce (5 April) on the question of law and fact in the matter of the Aragon marriage. Could the pope dispense from the impediment of affinity with a brother's widow, when the marriage had been consummated, and had the evidence of the suit established that the marriage of Katharine and Arthur had in fact been consummated? To both these questions the desired negative and affirmative answers were returned by overwhelming majorities. Of those present only sixteen gave an affirmative answer to the first question—among them the abbots of Winchcombe and Reading, and the priors of Ely, Walsingham and St Gregory's, Canterbury—and only six a negative one to the second query.2 In the following month (11 May 1533) the bishops and abbots were required to follow Cranmer's example, given a few months back, by repudiating the oath of obedience to the pope which they had taken on their appointment or election, and on 1 June they were present in large numbers at the coronation of Queen Anne at Westminster, which the monks of the house attended in copes. In the following year, in the session of parliament beginning 15 January 1534, the House of Lords received, and read three times (14-17 March), the Dispensations Act, which the writer of the Lords' Journal entitled ' the bill concerning the usurped authority of the Roman Pontiff'. At these readings twelve abbots were present, including those of Reading and Colchester.3 Nine days later, a second version of the submission of the clergy went through, followed shortly by the Heresy Bill, which decreed, inter alia, that speaking against the papal claims was not heresy; then, in the presence of the king, members were solemnly reminded of the oath ' to observe all the effects and contents of the act' foreshadowed in the recently passed (first) Act of Succession as applicable to all the king's subjects.* The sanction of Praemunire had already been attached to the submission of the clergy and the Statute of Appeals, and the control of the exempt monasteries had been vested in the king. Hitherto the abbots in parliament and the prelates summoned to Convocation had been the only ones to bear whatever personal responsibility attached to those who allowed the king and his minister to have their way. Now for the first time each individual religious was compelled to take personal action. The procedure in this difficult business of swearing-in the whole population above the age of childhood seems to have been that the Ordinary (or some other exalted commissioner) took the oaths of abbots, priors and curates, and that these produced lists of their subjects who were 1 Pickthorn, Henry VIII, 201. The lesser clergy and laity were justified in holding that the * spirituality' had sold the pass. One John Heseham was apprehended by Sir Piers Dutton in 1536 for remarking 'that if the spirituall men had holden togeder the Kyng cold not have by [sic] Hed of the Churche' (LP, xi, 486). 2 Pocock, op. cit. II, 457—8. 3 Journals of the House of Lords•, I, 75. 4 Ibid. 1,80-1.

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1

sworn by lesser commissioners. As is familiar to all, the Oath of Succession ostensibly did no more than secure allegiance to the offspring of Henry and Anne as lawful heirs to the Crown; it did, however, also imply a great deal that was not specifically asserted: the unlawfulness of papal dispensation, the validity of the Boleyn marriage and, indeed, a wholesale renunciation in practice of papal authority. To the reader of to-day its implications, enforced and interpreted by the cumulative effect of the past year's legislation, proclamations, and acts of power, are clear beyond a doubt. Ostensibly, however, and even plausibly to contemporaries, it was concerned solely with domestic issues, in particular the (to the lay mind) inextricably tangled question of the divorce, and the purely practical matter of the succession. Only those who had clear convictions on the validity of the Aragon marriage, and who realized that the papal jurisdiction had long ago been flouted and abandoned, could be expected to make a stand. Outside the religious orders only Fisher, More, Dr Nicholas Wilson and one or two others refused to take the oath. The Carthusians, as will be seen,2 submitted after a time of hesitation and heart-searching, 'in so far as the law of God permitted', the Bridgettines also swore the oath. The Oath of Succession, however, was not enough for Cromwell and the king. Even before it was imposed the bishops had been specifically sworn to the royal supremacy, which was to be proclaimed resoundingly on 9 June 1534. By that time the process of imposing the new doctrine on the clergy was in full swing. A beginning was made with the friars, who received special and very drastic treatment. There were several reasons for this. In the first place, preaching was their raison d'etre, and they had long combined the functions, divided in the world of to-day, of popular preacher, political agitator, and broadcaster. Secondly, they were, as the monks and canons were not, members of a fully organized international order pivoted, however loosely, upon the papacy. Thirdly, the Observants in or near the capital, who stood high in popular esteem, had throughout the vicissitudes of the divorce suit kept up a vigorous protest in favour of Queen Katharine. Clearly, smooth progress with the new settlement of church affairs would be more likely if they could effectually be brought to heel. A visitation was therefore decided upon, and for this purpose Cromwell appointed two agents upon whom he could rely, Friar John Hilsey, prior provincial of the Dominicans, and Friar George Browne, provincial of the Austin friars,3 with powers to visit all the orders of friars and to secure 1 Cf. the letter of the bishop of Winchester to Cromwell on 5 May 1534, in Pocock, 11, 536 ( = Letters of Stephen Gardiner, ed. Muller, 56). 2 Infra, pp. 229—30. 3 The commission to Browne and Hilsey, dated 13 April, is in LP, vu, 587 (18). Bale, in his 'Catalogus Priorum Generalium', printed by Zimmerman, Monumenta Historica Carmelitanoy I, 245-65, has paragraphs on Browne and the last Carmelite 'general' John Byrde.

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their adhesion to a sufficiently comprehensive set of articles.1 According to these, not only did they take the Oath of Succession (article 2), but they explicitly admitted the validity of the Boleyn marriage, accepted the king as supreme head of the Church, and denied that the bishop of Rome had any more authority than that of every diocesan bishop. In addition, they were to agree never to refer to the bishop of Rome as pope, and in their sermons they were to declare his power to be a usurpation. Two special directions were reserved for the Observants: they were to insert the king's name in the place of the pope's in their formula of profession, and to accept Friar Browne as their provincial. At all friaries a list of valuable and precious objects was to be drawn up. The visitation of the four original orders appears to have gone off smoothly and without protest.2 The Observants, as was to have been expected, were less compliant. In consequence, as will be related elsewhere, the two London houses were emptied of their communities, and the rest of the order were either imprisoned or driven into exile or quartered in confinement upon their Conventual brethren. 3 Concurrently with the visitation of the friars, commissioners toured the country in the second half of 1534 demanding adherence on oath from members of chapters, monastic communities, colleges and hospitals to a series of assertions and undertakings, of which the first was the acceptance in perpetuity of the king as Supreme Head of the Church, and the second a declaration that the bishop of Rome, who had usurped the title of pope, had no more scriptural warranty for exercising any jurisdiction over England than had any other foreign bishop. These were followed by prohibitions against calling the bishop of Rome by the papal title and observing any of his laws that had not been ratified in England, and by commands to preach in favour of the royal supremacy and against the pope. Something over one hundred certificates of this oath-taking by religious houses are preserved, and there can be little doubt that the absence of the remainder is purely accidental.4 Among the surviving lists there are no Cluniac, Cistercian, Premonstratensian or Gilbertine houses, but we know from other occasional evidence that some of these took the oath, and there is no reason to think that any were omitted. Nor is there any reason to suppose that any individuals refused to take the oath or to make the undertakings so far as words went. In this matter Baskerville's comment, that if any had refused to swear 'they and we would have heard about it', is 1 An inadequate precis of these is in LP, VII, 590. They are printed in full by H. de Vocht, Acta Thomae Mori, Appendix II, 208—9. 2 In a letter from Exeter of 21 June, Hilsey says that he has 'not found any religious persons who have utterly refused the oath of obedience* {LP, vn, 869). Constant, Reformation (Eng. trans.), 131, has' many' for * any', which presumably misled Hughes, Reformation, I, 276, into writing 'few'. The assent of all the London houses of friars is in Rymer, Foedera, Xiv, 487-9 (17-20 April). 3 V. infra, pp. 210-11. 4 The list of houses with the name of the superior and one or two others is in Rymer, Foedera, xiv, 485—527. A complete and accurate list is in Deputy Keeper s Reports, vn (1846), App. 2, pp. 279-306.

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1

probably valid. It is true that the assistant keeper at the Record Office, who transcribed the lists for governmental publication more than a century ago, noted that many of the signatures were not autographs, as the lists were all written in a single hand, but this cannot be pressed to imply that the community were unaware of what was going forward.2 The operative act was the 'corporal oath', taken upon the Scriptures in the presence of the commissioner by the whole community, and no doubt the list was prepared beforehand to expedite matters. We know of at least one individual who successfully evaded 'corporal' action, and of another who gave his assent by an ambiguous declaration which left his conscience free.3 Others may have done the same, and some may even have made themselves scarce during the visit of the commissioners, while many doubtless swore with a mental reservation, or with no intention of binding themselves: 'HyAcocTcr* d^co^ox', r\ 8£ 9pf}v dvcbjiOTOs.4 In the external forum, however, all were regarded as having sworn, and the abbots and priors could certainly not evade responsibility for their action, either as individuals or as heads of families. No doubt many acted against the grain, and as a concession to present evils, and hoped for the day when England would once more acknowledge the pope. It is not for the historian to say how many or how few were thus disposed. It is, however, within his province to record the facts. In the words of More's trenchant apologue, they were first deflowered that they might afterwards be devoured.5 It was not a question of conciliarist or Gallican opinion. By this action of compliance, which was not taken blindly or on a sudden impulse of fear, the monks did in fact admit a lay ruler to supreme power in spiritual matters and thus cut themselves off from the Roman Catholic Church of which the pope was head, and when we have no evidence of any expression of remorse or any word of recantation we have no grounds for supposing that they returned into her fold. 1 EM, 117. 2 Deputy Keeper's Reports, VII, 279:' The signatures in my opinion are not all autographs, but frequently in the same handwriting, and my impression is, that the writer of the deed often added many names.' 3 The evasive monk was of Woburn (LP, x, 1239); the astute (or simple) one was the young sacristan of Beauvale who, 'when the king's Commissioners asked for the supremacy and how he took the king, answered plainly: "I take him as God and the Holy Church take him: and I am sure he taketh himself none otherwise."' With this simple answer (so we are told) they were contented (Hendriks, The London Charterhouse, 304-5). V. Appendix v, infra, 4 'My tongue swore, but my heart is unsworn.' The notorious declaration of Hippolytus by which Euripides incurred such odium {Hippolytus, 612) was unconsciously echoed by Friar Forest, who' took the oath with the outward man, but his inward man never consented thereto' (v. infra, p. 370). 5 The correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. Rogers, p. 521. The various shifts of the perplexed minds of the day were catalogued once and for all by More in the Tower in August 1534, when hejsaid to his daughter:' Some may doe [i.e. take the Oath of Succession] for favour, and some may doe for feare... and some might hap to frame himself a conscience and thinke that while he did it for feare God wolde forgive it. And some may peradventure thinke that they will repent, and be shryven thereof.. .and some may peradventure be of that minde, that if they say one thing and thinke the while the contrary, God more regardeth their harte than their tonge.' Cf. also ibid. jij.

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Throughout the summer and autumn the monasteries up and down the land were being sworn to the supremacy and repudiation of the pope. On 17 August the commissioners visited Worcester, and Prior More and his monks duly took the corporal oath. They did not know that two days previously, on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, another company of men were taking an oath of a different kind. On that day a group of unknown students, of varying ages and nationalities, Peter Faber, Francis Xavier, Laynez, Salmeron, Bobadilla, Le Jay and Rodriguez, with their leader, Ignatius of Loyola, took their first vows in a chapel on Montmartre in Paris, thus laying the foundation-stone of the Company of Jesus. While the commissioners were still on tour Cromwell and the king drove the last rivet into the fetter of royal supremacy. What had been proclaimed in June was given statutory record early in November by the Act of Supremacy, and a prospective and retrospective sanction was given for any oaths that might be imposed in its support.1 This was followed by the Treasons Act,2 which imposed the penalty for treason on all who maliciously spoke, wrote or acted in such a way as to * deprive* the king of any dignity, title, or name of his royal estate. The first day of February was appointed for the act to come into force, and a few days before that date the title of Head of the English Church was solemnly added to Henry's style. It was by this combination of statutes that Fisher, More and the Carthusians were finally brought within the net. The penalty for refusing the Act of Succession had been no more than imprisonment and loss of goods, and the swearing-in of prelates and communities to the maintenance of the Supremacy had presumably been accomplished by the order of Head of the Church and his vicar-general; there had been no statutory penalty attached to a refusal to swear, and for reasons of policy Cromwell had been unwilling to bring the Carthusians and Bridgettines sharply up to the brink; the Observants were a more pressing problem, and could be dealt with by an act of power, but the others, as enclosed religious, were at once less of a nuisance and more difficult to eliminate; with them the process, as we shall see, was slow. The adhesions to the Supremacy, which had been collected during the autumn of 1534, were still incomplete when the first move was made to appoint visitors for the monasteries; and these appointments were followed almost at once by those of the commissioners for the tenth, the compilers of the Valor Ecclesiasticus. When at last the visitors began their work in the late summer of 1535, the first of the injunctions that they carried with them ordered the abbot and community * faithfully, truly and heartily to 1 Act of Supremacy, 26 Henry VIII, c. 1:2; Act of Succession, ibid. c. 2. Chapuys heard of the passing of the Supremacy Act on the morning of 17 November (XP,vn, 1437; cf. 1377, 1482). For the decree of 15 January 1535, announcing that the title of Supreme Head of the Church would be assumed by the king on 1 February, v. Rymer, Foedera, xiv, 549. 2 Treasons Act, 26 Henry VIII, c. 13.

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keep and observe, and cause, teach and procure to be kept* the observance of the Acts of Succession and Supremacy; the second enjoined that all should' observe and fulfill by all the means that they best may, the statutes of this realm, made or to be made for the suppression and taking away of the usurped and pretended jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome within this realm'. It was thus a harassed and submissive body, habituated to royal visitations of every sort, who had nothing to fear or to hope from papal action, that faced the interrogatories and injunctions of Leigh and Layton. The successive stages of acquiescence on the part of the religious, and the several degrees of oath-taking have been set out in some detail because it is very easy for a reader to lose his bearings in the rapid and confused succession of events and legislation. Even careful historians continue to make misleading statements. Many confuse the statutory oath to the Act of Succession of 1534 with the non-statutory oath renouncing the papal jurisdiction in the same year, or with the process consequent upon the denial of the king's title of Supreme Head after 1 February 1535. Others make the mistake of denying that any oath to the supremacy was ever exacted. In consequence, many of the apologists of the monks have shown themselves ignorant or forgetful of the fact that by the end of 1535 all the monks, with the rarest individual exceptions, such as the remnant of the London Carthusians (and apparently also the Bridgettines), had repeatedly and solemnly rejected the pope and explicitly accepted royal supremacy, while some of the critics of the monks reduce unduly the admittedly small number of those who refused one or other of the oaths.1 1 Baskerville, whose scholarly accuracy has often been assumed without question, is often in fact inaccurate, and sometimes tendentiously so. Thus, e.g. on pp. 116-18 of EM, he confuses the oath of succession with the oath abjuring the pope, and reduces and confuses the number of those among the Carthusians, Bridgettines and Observants who refused to take the anti-papal oath. To those just named must be added the rare but notable individuals, such as the monk of Jervaulx, Friars Browne, Cooke and Stone, and the secular priests and laymen, who during the next eight or ten years refused the oath of supremacy and died for it.

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CHAPTER XV

ELIZABETH BARTON The first series of happenings that embroiled a number of monks and religious with the government was connected with the career of Elizabeth Barton, the Maid of Kent. It was the lot of this unfortunate woman to be the object of the most diverse judgments when alive, and historians have not succeeded in reaching an agreement which was never achieved by contemporaries.1 The problem is indeed perplexed beyond hope of certain solution, for not only have we to deal with evidence provided by interested, dishonest and terrified parties, but we are also called upon to make, at least by implication, a spiritual judgment of a kind peculiarly difficult in any age or variety of circumstances. Was Elizabeth Barton, in her days of freedom, a hypocrite, or a hysteric, or a sincere recipient of some kind of supernatural influence, or a mixture of two or more of these characters? Did she in fact, freely and frankly, confess to imposture, or were the words imputed to her falsely or wrested from her by trickery, threats and maltreatment, and twisted into a meaning which she did not intend them to bear? Or was it rather that her faith failed under physical or psychological duress and, once lost, was never recovered? Though the issue may seem trivial, or at least outside the scope of an historian, he cannot avoid making a judgment, at least by implication, for the matter affected the fate and reputation of the Nun's clientele of monks and friars, of whom the most notable were two monks of Christ Church, Bocking and Dering, and two Franciscan Observants, Risby and Rich, who were closely associated with her career, and shared her fate. Elizabeth Barton was a servant maid of one Thomas Cobb, steward of the archiepiscopal estates that lay around the Kentish village of Aldington, which lies on the lower slope of the downs that face westward over Romney Marsh. At Easter, 1525, she became to all appearance seriously ill, and remained so for several months; the illness was accompanied by trances, in which she foretold coming events and asserted that the Blessed Virgin had appeared to her and foretold her cure at the neighbouring 1 The episode of the Nun of Kent occupies considerable space in relevant volumes of LP and figures at length in contemporary chronicles and propaganda, especially Hall's Chronicle, II, 244-5, 247~59> an<^ Richard Morison, Apomaods calumniarum, pp. 73-5. All modern historians have devoted space to her; in the nineteenth century Lingard showed himself unfavourable, as did also Froude, while Gasquet attempted a rehabilitation; the most balanced judgment was perhaps that of Bridgett in his Life of Fisher. The article on Elizabeth Barton in the DNBt by the editor Sir Sidney Lee, is violently biased and full of historical errors, as is also that on Bocking. References to her also abound in the works and letteis of More, Fisher, Cromwell, Cranmer and Tyndale. In more recent times A. D. Cheney, 'The Holy Maid of Kent', in TRHS, n.s., xvm, gives a useful account of her early days, and the Rev. L. E. Whatmore published the text of Capon's sermon at Paul's Cross in EHR, LVIII.

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chapel of Court-at-Street. The cure duly took place amid a great throng of people on the Feast of the Assumption (15 August), and the chapel became a place of pilgrimage, with a fame that endured even after its originator had suffered a disgraceful death. Meanwhile, Richard Masters, the rector of Aldington, had informed Archbishop Warham, who took the traditional step of setting up a commission of enquiry, appointing as its head Dr Edward Bocking, cellarer of the cathedral monastery of Christ Church. The commission reported favourably, and at the archbishop's orders the Maid entered the Benedictine convent of St Sepulchre near Canterbury, where Warham appointed Bocking to be her confessor and director. This was in the autumn of 1525, when Elizabeth was sixteen years of age. She remained at Canterbury for almost eight years, but as the rule of enclosure was not strictly applied at that time she was able to travel to London and elsewhere on visits of devotion, or in her role of spiritual counsellor and comforter of those in distress. Her illnesses and trances continued to occur, especially at the Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin (8 December),1 and she believed herself charged with messages of hope and warning to great and small alike. At the same time her life was blameless and edifying, and she won and retained the confidence and love of many who found in her advice and encouragement a strengthening and inspiring force. When in 1527 the matter of the king's marriage began to be bruited, the Nun of Kent, as she was now called, was steadfast in her opposition, which was, so she said, repeatedly encouraged and given precision by what she saw or heard in her trances. It must be remembered that in the early stages of the affair the king consulted widely all and sundry, and professed to have an open mind on the question, while the trials and negotiations of the long-drawn suit gave the utmost publicity to every aspect of the question which, as has happened so often with the matrimonial difficulties of those in high place, was a burning topic of general interest for six weary years. The Nun's pronouncements, therefore, whatever may be thought of her sincerity or spiritual wisdom, were not in the beginning as rash or dangerous as they came to appear, or as they have seemed to unsympathetic historians. Her reputation was clearly great. Warham himself, in 1528, obtained for her an interview with Wolsey2 whom, so it seems, she rebuked sharply both for his general neglect of his responsibilities and in particular for his share in the divorce proceedings. She also obtained access to Silvester Darius, Auditor of the Rota, and Giovanni Antonio Pulleo, and sent by them messages to Clement VII, threatening him with disaster if he encouraged the king.3 She pressed Queen 1 So the prior of Christ Church in Wright, SL, vn, 21-2. 2 LPt iv, ii, 4806 (1 October 1528). Warham refers to Elizabeth as *a well-disposed and virtuous woman, as he hears from her sisters'. He seems to have been consistently favourable to her, introducing her to Fisher as well as Wolsey, and he clearly believed in her sincerity and apparently also m her spiritual pretensions. 3 So Capon in EHR, LVIII, 467-8, and the preamble to the attainder (Hall, 11, 257).

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Katharine for an interview, but the queen steadfastly and, as it proved, wisely, refused to allow her to enter her presence.1 Henry himself sent for her and granted her an audience in which she spoke plainly against his project and of the catastrophe that would overtake him if he persevered with it. The king, uncertain as yet of his success and perhaps still affected by scruples of conscience or superstition, took her visit ostensibly in good part, but did not forget it. Whether her exhortations, as was later asserted, had any real effect upon the conduct of Wolsey and Warham cannot be known with any certainty, but in the years when all the spiritual elite of London and its environs—More, Fisher, the Friars Observant, the Bridgettines and the Carthusians—were known to be hostile to the divorce the influence of a reputed saint and visionary cannot have been negligible. During all this time Dr Edward Bocking was her adviser and impresario,3 and, like William Flete almost two centuries before, the centre of a group that recalls the famiglia that gathered round their * mother', St Catherine of Siena. Besides Bocking and Dering, there was another monk of Christ Church and Dan John Hawley of St Augustine's, along with several of Bocking's 'novices'. Then there were Dr Risby, a Wykehamist of both foundations and now warden of the Grey Friars at Canterbury, and Dr Rich, warden of Richmond; Henry Gold, one of Warham's chaplains, and his brother; Robert Colens, a Canterbury anchorite, Christopher Warener, anchorite at the Black Friars in the same city,3 Thomas Lawrence, registrar to the archdeacon of Canterbury, Edward Thwaites, a Kentish gentleman, and, on the fringe of the circle, Dan Henry Man, a Carthusian of Sheen, and several other monks from there and from the London Charterhouse. Elizabeth Barton was a familiar and honoured visitor at Syon, and on at least one occasion gave extremely salutary and effective counsel to a woman of London who claimed to be a visionary.4 During this long period of eight years nothing in her conduct invited criticism; the innuendoes in subsequent government documents are common form and are patently unjustified. Though young in years the Nun established an immediate ascendancy over men of mature age. Thus Henry Gold, Warham's chaplain, wrote to Dering that he was now about to visit her monthly: 'I promise you, I think every day a year till the month days, and that day of her presence (alack for pity) is no day, ne worthy to be called an hour ',5 and Henry Man the Carthusian, to whom she was 'my good mother Elizabeth, in whom is my trust', could write: 'Let us magnify the name of the Lord, who has raised up this holy virgin, 1 LP, vi, 1419. This probably explains Chapuys's neutral attitude towards the Nun, whom he might have been expected on general grounds to favour. 2 The term is used by H. A. L. Fisher, who gives what is on the whole the best short narrative of the episode {Political History of England, 1485-1547, 331 ff.)« 3 LP, vi, 1336. He writes of 'her perfect life and virtue*. 4 More, Letter 197, p. 484. 5 LP, v (1531-2), 1698.

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a mother indeed to me, and a daughter to thee, for our salvation—she has raised a fire in some hearts that you would think like unto the operation of the Holy Spirit in the primitive church.'1 She was, in addition, well known to three eminent men, two of whom, at least, in honesty, experience of the world, prudence, mental acumen and a sense of spiritual values were unsurpassed by any of their contemporaries. In a judgment of character the concurrent testimony of Warham, Fisher and More, and their esteem for Elizabeth Barton over a series of years, must carry considerable weight, and it goes far towards eliminating the possibility of complete and long-standing fraudulence. The quality of her experiences, however, is another matter. Mystical theology, and in particular the discernment of spirits and the criteria of authentic spirituality, were unfamiliar topics in early Tudor schools of divinity, and neither Warham nor Fisher would have claimed expertise in the field. Dr Bocking was a trained divine, but there is no indication that he had had any experience in guiding contemplatives. The directors of the Nun, therefore, lacked any assistance comparable to the classic treatises which the great Spanish mystics and theologians were to produce in such luxuriance before the century was out, and sixteenth-century England had made few demands upon directors of souls. Several of the experiences related by or claimed for Elizabeth Barton were such as would immediately have put a cautious mind on the alert, and they did in fact thus affect Sir Thomas More. At the same time, symptoms of trance and physical illness, which to-day would unhesitatingly be classed as hysterical or psychopathic, have frequently appeared in the early stages of the lives of those who have later been distinguished by virile sanctity,2 and the same may be said even of the more disquieting experiences of the Nun of Kent. Moreover, the best known of the medieval ecstatics had been distinguished by the abnormality of their lives. If those who knew her best were correct in their judgment of her essential goodness and sincerity, Elizabeth Barton, who unquestionably exhibited symptoms of hysteria in her youth, may perhaps be regarded as an instance of a type described with such precision by St John of the Cross fifty years later. More than once he gives instructions how to deal with one fundamentally sincere and receptive of spiritual influence and called to the contemplative life, but still clouded by psychological weaknesses and unable to distinguish between true spiritual knowledge and the workings of imagination or hysteria. To such the same wise advice was given again and again by the Carmelite doctor: to disregard entirely all apparently distinct visions and revelations and emotions as if they had never been, and to give all one's care to loving and serving the invisible God, known by faith 1 LP, vi (1533), 835,1149 (2). 2 Cf. the illnesses recorded in the autobiographies of St Teresa of Avila, a younger contemporary of the Nun {Life, ed. Peers, ch. v), and St Therese of Lisieux in the 1880's (Histoire
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alone. Dr Booking lived in a world where this sane doctrine was not familiar, and indeed in a very few years men more learned and experienced than himself were to be at odds over similar phenomena in one greater and more fortunate than Elizabeth Barton.2 Booking is indeed the most elusive figure in this story. None of his relevant correspondence has been preserved, none of his contemporaries has any personal allusion to him; we hear nothing of his part or conduct in the final dibdcle. From his antecedents and attainments, as prior of Canterbury College, we should expect to find him a conventional, dry, practical, unspiritual and unenthusiastic man. Whatever he was, he undoubtedly acted unwisely in making much of the Maid's prophecies and still more in publishing them and abetting others in doing so. He can scarcely be acquitted of fostering any proclivity there may have been to fantasy on the part of his protegee, and it is very probable that the encouragement of Booking and others, who were admittedly hostile to the royal divorce, had its effect, if only a subconscious one, upon the subject-matter of the Nun's auditions. It is, however, most unlikely that he practised elaborate deceit or trickery; his fault was that of entering waters too deep for him, and of exploiting the outward and visible and fallacious accidents where he should have sought first the kingdom of God. Even so, the good character of Elizabeth Barton and her powerful wellwishers might have protected her, as they had protected previous holy women of the Middle Ages who had spoken of the testimonies of God before kings and popes, and had not been put to the blush. For some eight years her case had been treated on traditional lines: enquiries by the ordinary; assignment to a convent; appointment of a qualified confessor; and she had enjoyed the respect accorded to one who had survived formal examination and might well be a privileged witness to the unseen. The wisest man in England, the ex-Chancellor himself, old enough to be her father, had addressed her as his 'good Lady, and right dearly beloved sister in Our Lord', and had subscribed himself her * hearty loving Brother and Beadsman'.3 But in 1533 circumstances had changed. The great divide had been crossed and the control of things had shifted. Warham was dead, Henry was married to Anne, and Cromwell and Cranmer were in charge of Church and State, the one bent on eliminating all opposition to what was now fait accompli, the other deeply and personally committed to the change and devoid of all respect for mystics, whether genuine or 1 Cf. The Ascent of Mount Carmel, book n passim, esp. c. 18, which, had Dr Booking been able to read and follow it, would have saved both himself and his penitent from much sorrow. The saint showed himself well able to detect false mysticism (Works, ed. Peers, in, 299-300, 366). 2 St Teresa, Life, ch. xviii (ed. Peers, 185): 'They used to tell [my confessor Fr Baltasar Alvarez] that he must be on his guard against me, lest the devil should deceive him into believing anything I might say to him, and they gave him similar examples of what had happened with other people.' Cf. p. 189: one of her confessors told her 'it was clear I was being deceived by the devil*. 3 More, Letter 192, pp. 465-6.

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counterfeit. Events suddenly began to move swiftly. On 15 July the Carthusian Henry Man, writing to Bocking, had rejoiced that there were left a remnant who had not bowed the knee to Baal.1 On 19 July or thereabouts Cranmer, acting on orders from Cromwell who had himself been commanded by the king, sent to the prioress of St Sepulchre's with orders to bring Elizabeth Barton to the archbishop at Otford in Kent.2 It is natural to ask why a move was made at this precise moment, after so long a delay. In default of explicit evidence it would seem likely that the king was moved by news or forecasts of his impending excommunication, which took place on 4 July in Rome. In the sequel, the chief aim of the king and his minister was to deprive both excommunication and prophetess of their credit by representing the former as effected by the latter, and the latter as deluded or criminal. Whatever the reason for the move, Cranmer, as on other occasions, acted with deceptive gentleness, and was for sending the Nun to Court-of-Street in the hopes that new and more dangerous revelations might be forthcoming.3 Cromwell, however, had followed up his first letter with a questionnaire to be used by the archbishop, and this had the desired effect of eliciting answers bearing on the king's marriage. At the end of September the minister was ready and Sir Christopher Hales, the Attorney-General, was at Canterbury rounding up the selected victims. * As I can catch them, one after other', he wrote, 'I will send them to you.' 'The two religious men', he added, with reference to Bocking and Dering, 'are of as good reputation as any in their degree.'4 After a first examination, it seems, the Nun was sent back to Canterbury, and enquiries were made of all those to whom she was known to have spoken. Early in November she was arrested again and taken to the Tower, for Chapuys had heard of her imprisonment by 12 November. 5 From this moment onwards we are in the realm of uncertainty and conjecture, with fragments of information that are at best unreliable and for the most part either biased or patently tendentious. It is clear that the Nun was examined several times by the Council and in the Star Chamber, and on or before 20 November a great gathering was got together of which the Council formed the nucleus, but which included also the principal judges, a number of bishops and many nobles from every part of England.6 Once assembled, they debated for three whole days together what Chapuys 1 LP, vi, 835. The reference is no doubt to those who still disapproved of the king's second marriage. 2 LP, vi, 869. 3 LP, vi, 967. Richard Gwent, Dean of the Arches, writes to Cromwell on 11 August: 'My Lord doth yet but dally with her, as he did believe her every word: and as soon as he hath all he can get of her she shall be sent to you/ 4 LP, vi, 1148 (24 September). 5 Spanish State Papers, t S31-3, no. 1149 (LP, vi, 1419). Chapuys speaks of Elizabeth Barton as 'a nun who had always lived till this time as a good, simple and saintly woman'. 6 The fullest account is that of Chapuys, Spanish State Papers, no. 1153 (LP, vi, 1445). It is confirmed by Capon, ed. Whatmore, art. cit. 473, and in part by Cromwell himself (Wright, SL, no. xi, p. 31), who speaks of 'as greate assembly and counsel of the lordes of this realme as hath beene seene many yeares heretofore out of a parliament*.

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calls ' the crimes, or rather the foolish superstitions, of the Nun and her adherents*, no doubt in the wider context of the threat from Rome. The principal charge against Elizabeth Barton was of having spoken and influenced opinion against the king's divorce and second marriage, and she was accused of having influenced Warham, Wolsey and even Clement VII in this sense. At the end of it all Chancellor Audley warned the assembly not to take any notice of papal sentences induced by the * damnable and diabolic instrumentality* of the nun, or of her prophecies that the king would shortly have to face rebellion and dethronement, with an ultimate prospect of damnation. At this, so Chapuys relates, the gathering, which so far had listened in silence, broke out with the cry: ' To the stake with her! * The king, indeed, proposed that the Nun and her associates should be condemned as traitors and heretics, but verbal treason was not yet criminal by statute, and the men of law were not prepared to condemn for misprision of treason those who had merely heard what the Nun herself had told the king face to face. The Nun had been present throughout the Chancellor's speech, listening with perfect equanimity, and avowing that all that had been said of her activities was true.1 The phrase is ambiguous, but it would seem certain from other sources that at some time during her examination Elizabeth Barton had 'confessed' that her alleged revelations were imaginary. What lay behind this confession cannot be known. She had been in the Tower, and repeatedly examined, not only by the Council, but apparently also by Cranmer and Latimer, who makes an unexpected appearance for a moment.2 There is no evidence that torture was used, but the possibility cannot be ruled out;3 she was certainly exposed to searching and pitiless interrogation, mingled with cajolery and threats, from a group of extremely able and unscrupulous lawyers. The letters of Cromwell to Fisher and More, and the reports of the trials of the two latter, give us some idea of the mental and moral pressure that was brought to bear upon those whom the government wished to trick or to break. Joan of Arc a century before, and Edmund Campion fifty years later, lost their balance for a moment when hard pressed by great intelligence devoid of truth and mercy. Whatever the circumstances, Elizabeth Barton would seem (more 1 Spanish State Papers, no. 1149: * All this time the Nun was present in the room without exhibiting the least fear or astonishment.. .but, on the contrary, openly confessing and avowing that all that had been said of her was perfectly true.' Even if accurate, this account is ambiguous, as we do not know what had been said previously. Whatmore, art. cit. 473, n. 1, takes it as an * open and intrepid admission of opposing the divorce', which might seem at first glance plausible. It would, however, appear to be undeniable that the Nun made some sort of damaging confession at least four or five days before 23 November, and this brings us very near the date of the council. Moreover, Capon on 16 November refers to a confession (LP, vi, 1433; cf.EHR,LVIII,473), while on 23 November he asserts this to have been made before the great assembly. 2 Hall, Chronicle, 11, 244, notes the share of 'one called Hugh Latimer'. 3 Constant, Reformation in England (Eng. trans. I, 210 n.), asserts that torture was used, citing Morison, Apomaxis calumniarum, 75, but there is no such statement in Morison.

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than that cannot be said) to have declared that her revelations were imaginary,1 and had been suggested and encouraged by Bocking and others. This, however, was not the end. Almost immediately after her 'confession' she chanced to meet Thomas Gold, one of her associates, in the Tower, and told him that her confession was due to a divine inspiration that had come to her to deny her revelations, since God's good time for their fulfilment had not yet come. Gold, who was not a prisoner, passed this on to his brother, and it reached Bocking and Risby at Canterbury.2 However garbled and untrustworthy the incident may be, it seems to indicate that Elizabeth Barton's * confession' was a failure of constancy, rather than an admission of fraud, and that she endeavoured to prevent its consequences. In the sequel, she seems to have gone back upon her disavowal, and to have reiterated her confession. Whatever the truth of the matter, she had broken up her company and destroyed her credit once and for all. The government decided to bring contempt and ridicule upon the whole affair by a public denunciation at Paul's Cross, Canterbury, and elsewhere. John Capon {alias Salcot), abbot of Hyde, a protege of Anne Boleyn who was expecting a bishopric, allowed himself to be put up to preach and to vilify the Nun. His sermon, which has been preserved,3 is confused, inaccurate and scurrilous, but it seems certain that Elizabeth Barton and her leading associates, who were present, signed some sort of confession.4 No further steps were taken for some time against the Nun, though she and her friends remained in prison. 1 Capon says this (EUR, LVIII, 469,473) and, though his word is intrinsically worthless, he was speaking in the presence of the Nun herself, who had previously shown herself ready enough in self-defence. We may of course suppose that she had been rendered harmless by physical or psychological torture, but there is no direct evidence of this. 2 Capon's account (EHRy toe. cit. 473-4) of this recantation is the most interesting addition to our knowledge furnished by his sermon when printed in extenso. He twice emphasizes that it had been made very recently, * within these four days past' (p. 473), 'within these four days' (p. 474). It is not easy to agree with the editor, Father Whatmore, when he maintains that the Nun made no confession of guilt of any kind. Capon's account receives some corroboration from the anonymous informer who gives in his letter to Cromwell (Wright, Letters, vi, 18) among other 'revelations' of the Nun: 'How the angell of God hath comaundyd hur to say that all ar but yllusions, for the tyme is not cum that God wille put forth the wurk.' All this evidence, however, comes from tainted sources; it is possible that the Nun revoked her confession without any appeal to supernatural warnings. 3 Summarized in LP, vn, 72 (3), and printed by Whatmore, who shows that the sermon with the necessary alterations was repeated a week or two later at Canterbury by Dr Nicholas Heath. This makes it very probable that the sermon as delivered by Capon at Paul's Cross was prefabricated in Cromwell's office. 4 Art. cit. 473: 'And these persons here present.. .have confessed themselves to be greatly to blame that they have given so light credence unto her upon her own saying, without due examination and proof had thereupon, and have confessed that they surely believe her said revelations to have been falsely forged, contrived, feigned and counterfeited/ From this it is clear that they confessed to having been deluded by the Nun, and deplore their credulity. They make no confession of having used her as a tool. The preamble to the attainder, however, assumes that they took an active and deliberate part in the deceit, and this insinuation was made still more precisely by Hall, Chronicle, 11, 245: ' These. . . confessed their feigned hipocrisy, and dissimuled sanctitee [this slip surely indicates that Hall is extending the Nun's confession to all]. . . and signed [a bill] declaryng their subtile, craftie and supersticious doynges.'

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The king and Cromwell were far more interested in implicating the more distinguished opponents of the divorce. Queen Katharine, by steadily refusing to see or to correspond with the Nun, had kept herself out of range, but More and Fisher seemed vulnerable. As the lawyers still boggled at admitting a case for misprision, it was decided to proceed by the novel method of attainder, thus obviating the necessity for trial. In the bill as originally presented, the names of both More and Fisher were included. More's defence was so strong that the king grudgingly agreed to omit him; Fisher was more deeply implicated and more forthright in defence; his name remained. The bill as finally passed, not without difficulty, went over the whole affair in a long, rambling and untruthful preamble, drawing freely upon the story as given in the official version of the previous November.1 On 21 April 1534, Elizabeth Barton, the Benedictines Bocking and Dering, the Observant Risby and the priest Henry Gold, were executed as traitors at Tyburn. A confession, purporting to be the Nun's last words at the gallows, is printed by the chronicler Hall.2 As has been said, the two monks Bocking and Dering remain dim figures, but on no sober interpretation of the story does the crude villainy attributed to Bocking in the sermon and preamble of the attainder, and repeated by many historians, appear probable or indeed morally possible. All the evidence goes to show that he believed in the basic sincerity of Elizabeth Barton until the debacle of November 1533. In other words, she was not his tool or * medium' in any criminal sense. On the other hand, he can scarcely be acquitted of gross indiscretion as a spiritual director, which in the circumstances was also gross imprudence. Even on the most favourable interpretation of her character, the Maid had more than a touch of hysteria and fantasy, which were as apparent to clear minds of the sixteenth century as they are now. It should have been his task to restrain and conceal all such questionable manifestations, to screen her from all publicity, and to advise her to make nothing of her visions and auditions. It should have been clear to him that she was nearer of kin to Margery Kempe than to Joan of Arc or Catherine of Siena. Instead, attracted by the superficially marvellous, and searching for parallels in the ecstatics of the past, he acted as a showman rather than as a director. The others, with a natural but regrettable excitement at contact with a reputed mystic who shared their opinions on current events, were unable to maintain a prudent reserve. They cast their pearl, if pearl it was, before insensitive eyes, and the consequence was inevitable. As for Elizabeth Barton herself, her career must always remain enigmatic through lack of reliable evidence at the crucial point. As has already 1 As statutory authority was not yet available to support a charge of verbal treason, care was taken to insert in the bill such phrases as might imply actions, e.g. 'the sayd Hugh Rych actually travayled, etc' The preamble opens with a resounding declaration of the sanctity of the king's second marriage, and is throughout full of untruthful and tendentious statements. 2 Printed by Hall, Chronicle, 11, 259, and reprinted Cheney, art. cit. 119-20.

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been suggested, the most probable interpretation would seem to be that she was basically sincere, a mystic manquee who never learned, either owing to her own lack of fidelity or to unwise direction, how she might reach the depth of spiritual vision that sustained the Carthusians, More and Fisher in their hour of testing. When left alone to face the confusion of falsehood and cruelty she showed herself lacking in the simple heroism and humility which had ultimately saved Joan of Arc. She has been called the first of the conservative martyrs,1 and in so far as she died because with her, as with almost all those who died martyrs' deaths under Henry VIII, the head and front of her offending was an adverse judgment on the king's divorce, she may be counted to have died to uphold Christian morality, but in fact her equivocal conduct deprives her of a right to the title. Yet her death, and still more that of her supporters among the monks and friars, was a not unimportant moment in the chain of events. It was one more warning that neither the religious habit, nor a reputation for sanctity, nor a skill in divinity, counted for anything with those now in power; one more instance of the failure of traditional piety to justify itself to the world; one more warning to those who fain would have called a halt to the march of events but who loved too well their life and the England that they knew. Cranmer informed his friends with great satisfaction and some inaccuracy of the discomfiture of the queen's enemies. The community of Christ Church felt called upon to dissociate themselves, in abject and fulsome terms, from their unfortunate colleagues, and the archbishop followed up their appeal to the king with a supporting letter.2 'I suppose', he adds persuasively, 'they will desire me to offer unto your grace for a plesure ii or iii c lib.' The monks of St Augustine's, for their part, indulged for the last time that spirit of emulation which for nearly a thousand years had distinguished the relations of the two Canterbury churches to each other.3 Of Elizabeth Barton herself, the only personal memorial is the list of her scanty belongings—* an old matteres,vii corsse schettes A lyttell old dyaper towell An old mantell and a kyrtell'—which escheated to the Crown as a traitor's goods, but were in part bought back by her prioress and her sisters.4 1 H. A. L. Fisher, Political History of England, 1485-164?, 334. 2 The letters of Prior Goldwell and his monks are in Wright, SJL, VII, vm. Cranmer's letter to the king in favour of 'my priory' is ibid, LXXXI (13 December 1533) on p. 271 of the Parker Society's edition. 3 Chronicle of a Monk ofSt Augustine's, Canterbury (CS, o.s. 77, pp. 280-1). 4 Wright, SL, x.

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KROIII

195 CHAPTER XVI

BEFORE THE DISSOLUTION I. THE OUTLOOK OF THE AGE

Before embarking upon a narrative of the events leading to the dissolution of the monasteries, it may be permissible to note some characteristics of Tudor society which in the past have often been overlooked by those unacquainted with the age. One such characteristic is that the modern tradition of public service, and even the outlook of a mechanical impersonal bureaucracy, had not yet come into existence. The agents of government great and small, from an Audley or a Cromwell downwards, were the servants of their immediate superior who might be the king himself or a minister directly appointed by him. They had their living and their career to make, and this could only be done by executing his commands and meeting his wishes; to suppose that they had any of the modern civil servant's or police officer's sense of duty to the public is to transfer the outlook of the present day to an age which had another way of regarding life. The same consideration applies, mutatis mutandis^ to the holders of all other positions or offices that are to-day considered of trust or * public', such as those of members of parliament, lawyers or even the judiciary. Among men of these classes there was a complete absence of the ethical conventions or the professional etiquette of their modern counterparts, save perhaps among men of the law when the issue was between private parties. All were the servants, mediate or immediate, of the king. This was of itself no new circumstance; it had been thus during the latter medieval centuries; what had changed was the position of the king. In the past the king in his public capacity had been, so to say, in solidarity with his servants and his subjects, the linchpin of a system of which he himself was an integral part. Now the king was, or could be, the authority using all his servants and services to implement a policy or design in which they as a body had no interest or share, and towards which they might feel dislike or disapproval. It was a peculiarity of the early sixteenth century in England, as distinct both from the fifteenth and from the seventeenth, that there was no class or group or profession or party sufficiently strong or resolute or self-confident to hamper the sovereign in the exercise of his initiative and executive powers. The Church and the baronage had had their day: the landed gentry and aristocracy and parliament were not as yet conscious of political power. The Tudor sovereignty, especially in the later years of Henry VIII, has sometimes been described as the rule of a tyrant, and the decade of Cromwell's ascendency, in particular the years following the Treasons Act

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of 1534, has often been called a * reign of terror*. The phrase, or its equivalent, first used by historians committed to no party allegiance, was taken up by Catholic apologists, and has recently been as energetically repudiated. It is perhaps a misleading phrase in this context. First applied to an episode in the French Revolution, it can properly be used only of a situation in which a whole class, whether social, political, racial or religious, is doomed to extinction irrespective of any personal act of resistance or submission on the part of its members. The French aristocracy at a particular stage of the Revolution, the propertied class politically opposed to the Russian revolution, the Jews in Hitler's Germany are examples of such a class. Henry VIII and Cromwell were often ruthless towards individuals, but they never wished or attempted to eliminate a class or party as such. The imposition, with extreme sanctions, of an oath such as that to the succession of Anne's children, or against the pope's jurisdiction, was a tyrannical act, and the imposition of the death penalty for verbal treason was so likewise, but in neither case was a particular class marked down for destruction which could not be avoided by any act of submission on the part of the destined victims. Save perhaps in the case of the Pole family, where purely personal and dynastic motives were allowed play, Henry VIII and Cromwell destroyed only those who opposed, or refused to accept, their measures and policies. Nevertheless, our reaction must not go too far. The repeated operation of the policy of exacting oaths from some or all of his subjects, taken together with the legal doctrine of verbal treason and misprision of treason and the official encouragement of delation, did in fact put great numbers of the king's lieges in a predicament and a state of potential danger such as has rarely, if ever, existed in this country either before or since. In all the specifically religious persecutions of the sixteenth century the accused could at least escape the supreme penalty by renouncing his beliefs. Verbal treason, on the other hand, once committed, could not be undone or atoned for by any subsequent recantation or protestation of loyalty or change of heart. An idle or ill-tempered sally or complaint, a justified criticism of government policy, spoken among acquaintances round a fire or on the road to market, could be hoarded in an informer's memory and produced by a spiteful enemy or an officious time-server a year or two afterwards with fatal consequences to the speaker. That Cromwell and his agents, for reasons which are hidden from us, let many cases drop even where the evidence was clear, should certainly be borne in mind by historians, but their behaviour, while it spared many, brought others, equally guilty or innocent, to the block and gallows. A second characteristic of the age, less important but still of significance for the historian, is the language of piety used by all men of every class and under all circumstances. This habit, indeed, of commending one's employers or correspondents to the care of the Holy Spirit, and of attributing the success of one's policies to the direct favour of God, is so

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common and is found in men so unashamedly mundane that it would be a mistake to regard it as a cloak or as a piece of hypocrisy; it was simply a conventional survival. Religious hypocrisy, indeed, appearing in a habit of attributing godly motives to worldly policies and profitable enterprises, has often, and perhaps with reason, been alleged as a peculiarly English characteristic, and the public men of the Tudor age, from the king downwards, were not exempt from the fault, but since a use of the language of devout faith when writing of human relationships and business affairs has dropped out of fashion in the present century we are apt to take professions of religious feeling as evidence of a sincere (even if of a misguided) religious outlook. To make this assumption of the public men of the reign of Henry VIII is most unwise. The early Tudor age was not one in which artistic or wide intellectual interests were common, as they were in contemporary Italy. We must not take More as the typical Englishman, nor must we apply to any realm save that of linguistic achievement the extravagant praises of the young Erasmus. Henry himself, Fisher, Gardiner, Cranmer, Longland and the rest were all well-educated men of considerable intellectual power: the king, indeed, in his early manhood, had seemed an admirable Crichton. Yet none of these men is sensitive, cultivated and percipient in such a way as are, let us say, Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, Charles I, Falkland or Clarendon. Even such men as More and Erasmus, though eminently learned and richly gifted, are not citizens of the wide world as are Leonardo or Shakespeare. Foreigners noted the wealth, the domestic prodigality, the public display of England, but the English scene was very different from that of the contemporary Venice or Florence, with their elegance and grace and subtlety of thought and emotion. Nor was there any sense of adventure or romance, or of a great ideal, in the English air. The aim of all was material prosperity, cash, land, high place, physical ease; devotion to an idea or to a cause or to learning and art were rare if not unknown. Selfishness, ambition, faithlessness, venality and hypocrisy are human failings in every age and country. They were certainly not lacking in the Italy of Leo X, where Michelangelo could wish for the oblivion of marble and sleep, * while scathe and shame endured*. Rarely, however, have they been found all together and so universally as in the reign of Henry VIII. Other vices and failings are not typical: lawlessness, irresponsibility, profligacy, spendthrift dissipation, bitter cruelty—these have been seen more clearly in other ages and in other countries: but it is difficult to think of an age in which unselfishness, devotion to an ideal, faithfulness to a master or a friend were rarer in public life, or one in which lust for material gain was greater. One idea and ideal remained, and was used to give a veneer to every design. This was respect for the office and person of the king, which made submission and obedience to him the first and ultimate principle of political and national life. This is not the place to attempt a discussion of

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the historical and psychological origins of this devotion; they exist and can be defined; we can say what we mean by 'the mystique of the Tudor kingship'. Every age, our own included, has such overpowering sentiments that seem obsessions to those who come after: 'reason', 'equality', 'rights of man', 'progress', 'self-determination'. Here it is enough to realize the paramount and ubiquitous influence of the Tudor devotion. It is found in the most courageous and clearsighted—in a More or an Aske—as well as in the thoughtless, the simple and the servile. Of all the leading men of the age Fisher, perhaps, shows least infection; More, who had it deeply, was nevertheless clearsighted enough to recognize both it and its dangers long before the latter were apparent to all. In a very real sense it was not Henry, but his subjects, who made of him supreme head of the Church on earth; long before 1535 they had, without knowing it, made of the king the sole object of their devotion and obedience, and they had no reply when Henry took them at their word. The lion, as More had feared, had come to know his strength at last. For us, in what follows, it is enough to remember that these two most characteristic features of contemporary public life—the materialistic, cautious, realist outlook and the complete submission to the king—were present in varying degrees in all Englishmen of whatever rank or order. Monks, friars, priests and bishops show them as clearly as do courtiers, members of parliament or agents of Cromwell. It is only by remembering that the religious were Englishmen of their day that we shall begin to understand the sequel. The assumption, tacitly made by many of the apologists of the monks in the past, that the religious, men and women alike, were a class apart, with another outlook and other ideals, is without foundation in fact. It would be true of the Jesuits and seminary priests fifty years later, and true of the clergy and religious in France at the opening of the present century, but it is not true of the early Tudor religious. Monks and clergy alike were children of their age and country; it was this that made the Dissolution, and indeed many of the religious changes of the reign, not only possible but relatively easy of accomplishment. II.

THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN

No evidence has hitherto come to light as to the precise moment when the design for suppressing the religious houses in general was conceived in the form that was to be translated into action, or as to the immediate author of the scheme. There is no reason to suppose that Henry, at the time of the cardinal's fall, had any clear intention of following the examples of Germany and Scandinavia. Cromwell, on the other hand, with his experience of the profits that had accrued from winding up decayed and disorderly houses, and with his keen interest in European conditions, may well, even before 1530, have fixed upon some project of partial dissolution as the most promising expedient for raising revenue. Even here there can

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be no certainty; when Cromwell made his will in 1529, he left a small legacy to the four London houses of friars.1 The government's need for funds increased very rapidly after the cardinal's death: shrinking revenues, the king's extravagance in building and in buying estates, troubles in Scotland and Ireland and, a little later, defence preparations against continental enemies of the divorce, all combined to make action of some kind inevitable. More than one observer noted about this time that Henry's early liberality had given way to avarice;2 his father had been accused of this characteristic, and its gradual appearance in the son was partly due to real need, partly, perhaps, to heredity, and partly also to the general hardening of his character. There is good evidence that Cromwell, perhaps on more than one occasion, promised to make his master extremely wealthy ;3 when he did so, he must have had in mind some scheme for liquidating a part of the Church's wealth. In the event, several sources were tapped before the monasteries were laid under contribution, and the various moves no doubt often supplied a topic for discussion at the interviews between minister and king; but of these no word has survived. Yet if the moment of final decision is unknown we can watch the gradual movement towards action of some sort. As early as April 1529, Cardinal Campeggio is found writing in some anxiety to Sanga, a papal secretary in Rome, about the free circulation of Lutheran books at the English court.4 According to the cardinal, these books contained promises of full acceptance of orthodox doctrines if the king would reduce the clergy to the conditions they enjoyed in the primitive Church by taking away all their temporal possessions. When he remonstrated with the king and cited conciliar statements as to the right of the Church to own property, Henry replied that it was churchmen after all who held those views. What books were in question is not known, but it was possibly in this year that Simon Fish's short tract, A Supplication for the Beggars, was scattered abroad at the royal procession on Candlemas Day, and subsequently broadcast over London.5 Fish did little more than warm up some fragments of Wyclif's programme, with a characteristic recklessness of statistics, but he undoubtedly went straight to the point. Bishops, abbots and their like, he told the king, * have gotten ynto theyre hondes more then the therd part of all youre Realme. The goodliest lordshippes, manors, londes and territories are theyrs*. In addition, let him consider, 'the 1 Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, by R. B. Merriman, I, 62. Too much should not be made of this modest bequest. 2 R. Pole, Apologia, 92, stresses the king's avarice, as does the French ambassador, du Bellay, in LP, iv, 4649 (20 August 1528). The abbot of Colchester's remark nine years later (c. 4 November 1537) 'that the King and his Council were driven into such inordinate covetousness that if all the water in the Thames were flowing gold and silver, it were not able to slake their covetousness' (LP, xiv, ii, 458), doubtless reflected current gossip. 3 Pole, op. cit. 121 seqq. 4 LP, iv, iii, 5416 (3 April 1529). 5 Fish's work was ed. by F. J. Furnivall in EETS.

2OO

S U P P R E S S I O N AND D I S S O L U T I O N

infinite nombre of begging freres; what get they yn a yere?' 1 Allowing fourpence a year as alms from each person in the realm, and a population of some two-and-a-half millions, the friars will net £43,333. * And what', he adds, 'do al these gredy sort of sturdy, idell, holy theves?.. .Truely nothing', save seducing wives to the number of a hundred thousand.2 Besides these private disasters, the clergy are a constitutional menace: Are they not stronger in your owne parliament house then your selfe? What a nombre of Bisshopes, abbotes and priours are lordes of your parliament. Are not all the lerned men in your realme in fee with theim, to speake yn your parliament house for theim? 3 In view of what was so shortly to happen in the parliament house, Fish's outlook cannot be considered realistic, but his remedy was practical enough: Set these sturdy lobies a brode in the world, to get them wives of theire owne, to get theire living with their laboure in the swete of theire faces,4 as no doubt Fish and the other pamphleteers did. It has been suggested that Fish's was the book brought to the king by the merchants George Elyot and George Robinson, and read to him at his request in his closet, after which, we are told: the kyng mad a long pause, and then sayde: if a man should pull downe an old stone wall and begyn at the lower part, the upper part thereof might chaunce to fall upon his head: and then he tooke the booke, and put it into his deske.5 Was Henry still pondering over the talk with Campeggio, and Fish's advice, when he sent to Convocation at Oxford for a copy of the articles for which Wyclif was condemned? 6 In any case nothing more is heard of this topic in official circles for some three years, when an event of some significance occurred. The community of Austin canons in the priory of Christchurch, London, long in debt owing to inefficient administration, suddenly in 1532 threw themselves upon the king's charity by surrendering the house to him as founder.? Their motives are not clear; other houses had been in worse case, and it would seem both that Cromwell had been at work and that 1 Fish, Supplication, 2. 2 Ibid. 46. 3 Ibid. 8. 4 Ibid. 14. 5 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, cited by Furnivall, op. cit. in trod, viii-ix. M. Creighton in DNB article on Fish accepts this, and adds: 'just before the reassembly of Parliament in November [1529] London was flooded with copies of it [sc. Fish's Supplication] in a way which suggests the connivance of someone in authority*. 6 LP, iv, iii, 6546 (2 August 1530). 7 For this episode, v. E. Jeffries Davis,' The Beginning of the Dissolution: Christchurch, Aldgate, 1532', in TRHS, 4th ser., viii. The writer, while rightly emphasizing its interest, possibly exaggerates its significance, relying on Fuller, Church History, book vi, iii (ed. J. Brewer, vol. ill, 358—62), who represents this suppression as a ballon d*essai on Henry's part. Similar methods were, however, employed still earlier elsewhere by Cromwell when need arose as, e.g., at Calwich (Staffs), 1530-2; cf. F. A. Hibbert, The Dissolution of the Monasteries, 36-7. Calwich was suppressed without a papal bull, by 'finding an Office'.

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2OI

some of the canons genuinely expected relief from the king. Actually, they were dispersed to other nouses, and the foundation was suppressed; much of the property went to Audley, the new Chancellor. No papal permission was obtained or solicited. This was the first example of complete secularization, and thus provided the spectacle of all the elements of the finished technique of suppression appearing together at the same moment. The case is also of interest for another reason. When property escheated or fell to the king, it was necessary for a jury on the spot to hold inquest and give their verdict—in technical phrase to ' hold an inquest of office* or 'find an office'—that the property was without an owner and so rightly reverted to the Crown. Wolsey had obtained a number of such verdicts by questionable means, when no surrender had taken place, and his conduct had provoked one of the articles brought against him. In the present instance, offices had been found for property outside London, but it may have been felt that a city jury might give trouble before it decided that the members of a corporation, of which the head was ex officio a City alderman, could legally and unreservedly make away with all their rights in perpetuity; they might also have questioned whether the king was in fact founder of the house. In any case, Cromwell consulted Audley, who advised a retrospective act of parliament to record and validate the transaction. His advice was taken, and proved a valuable precedent for future action.1 At the same time, the long interval between this surrender and any further move against the monasteries must tell against the opinion that has been expressed that the king and Cromwell were flying a kite, and that when no disaffection ensued they felt free to proceed to a more wholesale spoliation.2 Henry's mind, however, continued to brood over the matter, and in course of time the voice of conscience began to make itself heard. In March 1533 he broached the subject with Chapuys, who found him 'determined to reunite to the Crown the goods which churchmen held of it, which his predecessors could not alienate to his prejudice, and that he was bound to do this by the oath he had taken at his coronation'.3 A year later rumours of confiscation were again in the wind. Both Chapuys and John Husee, Lord Lisle's agent, expected it in the parliament that met in January of that year, and Nicholas Olah, in a very ill-informed letter, 1 All difficulty of this kind was circumvented in the end by the Act of May 1539, securing to the king unreservedly all surrendered property. A still more awkward legal situation had been avoided in anticipation by Cromwell when he proposed as an Act for the parliament of 1533: 'Any.. .Abbot, etc., convicted of high treason, to forfeit lands held in right of their corporations'. Thus in the last days of medieval monasticism the king regained in a magnified and sinister form the complete financial control which the abbeys of the twelfth century had eluded by separating the establishment and the liabilities of the abbot from that of the community. 2 V. supray p. 200 n. 7. Fuller, op. cit. 360, says that the king intended * to make a discovery in people's affections... and if he had found the people much startled thereat, he could... retrench his resolutions'. There is no evidence to support this opinion. 3 LP, vi, 235 (15 March).

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could write from Brussels to Erasmus that he has heard that Henry has distributed the monasteries to his nobility to use as they liked.1 In fact, the parliament that spring had other fish to fry, but in September the scheme was at last beginning to crystallize. Cromwell, to whom is' attributed language curiously like that of Olah's letter, told Chapuys that he understood that in the forthcoming parliament the king would distribute among the gentlemen of the kingdom the greater part of the ecclesiastical revenues to gain their goodwill.2 This may have been a preview of a document, calendared in November 1534, which contains a plan of expropriation, on the Swedish model, in the interests of the Crown. According to this, all episcopal revenues are to be reduced to a flat rate of 1000 marks, save for Canterbury and York (2000 marks and £1000 respectively), and the king is to have half the revenues of all cathedral and collegiate churches. All monasteries with less than thirteen monks are to be closed down out of hand, the revenues going to the king. In the remainder, a maintenance fund is to be set up by which priests will receive some £ 7 and other religious £ 5 a year apiece, while the abbot is to have as much as all the rest together; the residue is to go to the king. Nuns are to have £ 3 . 6s. Sd. a year each.3 Once again, nothing was done for the moment, but the schedule perhaps indicates Cromwell's original intention. Whatever may be thought of it, it was at least a reasoned, ordered scheme; events were to modify it into something much more haphazard. In any case Cromwell was boasting to Chapuys in December that he would make his master more wealthy than all the other princes of Christendom, and thenceforward events moved swiftly.4 Commissions to Cromwell, as vicar-general, to visit religious houses, and to his subordinates Tregonwell and Bedyll were probably drafted in December 1534, and those to the abbots of Stanley and Forde to visit named Cistercian houses followed early in January, but the commissioners were almost immediately side-tracked to give the road to more urgent traffic* On 30 January another set of commissioners were appointed, those for the inquests for the tenth which issued in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, and which gave the government information without which they could scarcely have carried through their programme of suppression so rapidly. The reports of the commissioners came to hand in the summer, and in August, as we shall see, the royal visitation began which led speedily and directly to suppression. 1 LPy VII, 24, 114 (28 January); in Erasmus's letters ep. 2915 (Allen, x, 368, 12 March 1534): '[Rex dicitur] monasteria distribuisse suis baronibus, quibus demolitis uterentur suo arbitrio.' 2 LPy VII, 1141 (10 September). 3 Ibid, vn, 1355. 4 Ibid. 1554 (Merriman, Life of Cromwell, I, 17): '[Cromwell] deust promettre de le faire le plus riche que oncques fut en Angleterre.' 5 LP, VIII, 73-5. It was presumably for an earlier project of this visitation that Layton composed his articles of enquiry to which he refers in his letter of 4 June 1535 {ibid. 822).

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203

Much has been written of the supposed motives behind the momentous decision which, far more than any of those concerned in it could have foretold, was to be of revolutionary significance not only in the religious, but also in the social and economic life of the nation. Did Henry and Cromwell, or the latter alone, see from the first, whatever the date of that 'first', a massive if not total secularization as the end to which all lesser moves were directed and by which they were determined? Or did they, or at least did the king, sincerely aim originally at mending, and only when that seemed hopeless decide on ending the monasteries? The latter opinion, though persistently and unrepentantly maintained by one more widely acquainted with English monastic history than any other of his day, can scarcely be considered tenable.1 Long before the visitors went forth in August 1535, with their questions and injunctions, the most fervent houses of religious had already been either disbanded or severely mauled, and even though this was nominally a political action, it is scarcely conceivable that a sincere and wise reformer would have gratuitously destroyed what all recognized as the mainstay of English monastic life. Moreover, and more significantly still, it is certain that no opportunity was given to the visitors to complete their work, or to the monks to show their readiness to obey the injunctions, before the irrevocable step was taken by the Act of Suppression of 1536. Finally, an argument might be drawn from Ireland, where the project of suppression was regarded from the first in a purely financial light.2 Yet, as we shall see, the king, at least, acted in 1536 and later as if there was a future for some, if not many, of the monasteries, though these were not necessarily to show signs of drastic reform. The available evidence, in other words, though in some ways so plentiful and explicit, fails us in our enquiry both for the exact moment, and for the exact form, in which decisions were taken. We can, however, say with some confidence that financial, and not religious, motives were uppermost in the minds of both king and minister; less confidently, but still with fair certainty, that both proceeded resolutely but as it were experimentally, as was natural to men who were both opportunists, though in different ways: Cromwell with the ruthless determination to seize what chances fortune might present of increasing his master's revenues; Henry, primarily eager for pecuniary gain, but uncertain of the risks and still retaining (what Cromwell had never had) something at least of the conservative's recognition of the religious way of life. But whatever may have been Henry's mind in the last months of 1534, his attitude in after years is certain. If he did not plan and will the whole pattern of events, he approved it and made it his own when it was accomplished. There are two illuminating aides-memoire written by the king 1 For Coulton's views at the end of his life, v. Five Centuries of Religion, iv, especially ch. lviii. 2 Cf. the memorandum (LP, xi, 1416) of 1536 listing the monasteries in the Pale of Ireland, and stating that if suppressed suddenly the king will get £3000 (Irish money), whereas if warning is given he will lose £1000 of this.

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respectively five and eight years later than 1535 to his envoy in Scotland, which have not received the attention they deserve.1 In them Henry lays bare, with considerable frankness, what he wished to be understood as his past designs. The first document is a series of instructions to Ralph Sadler, once factotum to Cromwell, who in 1540 was sent to Scotland with good advice for James V, towards whom the king of England habitually adopted the attitude of tolerant patronage suitable to their relationship. Henry had heard that his nephew had recently had recourse to the sordid expedient of driving off the sheep of his poorer subjects in order to augment his revenue. Such petty traffic was unworthy of a king; James would be better advised to follow his uncle's example and realize the monastic wealth of his kingdom, thus putting to far better use what was at present spent on * untruth and beastly living*. As one recounting with satisfaction a successful coup for the benefit of a junior, he mentions that he himself had taken 'good and politic means to increase his revenue' by gathering into his hands such houses 'as might best be spared'. Should James be attracted by the proposal, we shall not only give unto him our best advice and counsel, but also therein to aid and help him, to bring his good determination to a perfect end and conclusion. But, if he will ever do any thing this way, he must keep it very close and secret; for, if any of his clergy shall smell it, they will not fail, either by suggesting him to the wars, or by procuring some other prince or potentate to make war upon him, or by provoking of inward rebellion and treason, or by some false and untrue mean or other, to keep him in business and extreme need, or else utterly to destroy him. And therefore he must in this case... keep it close to his own heart, making very few, and these tried and trusty, of his counsel to be foreseen therewith, lest if they should savour it, he live not (as the King's Majesty trusteth he shall) till he have an hoary head. In the sequel, James died before he could profit from the avuncular counsel, but in 1543 the Regent, Arran, appeared to be a fit recipient of advice, and Henry forwarded a full programme to Sadler. As concerning the second point [he wrote], for the extirpation of the state of monks and friars, the enterprise whereof requireth politic handling, it shall be first necessary that the governor send substantial and faithful commissioners, as it were to put a good order in the same, and to provide that they may live the more honestly without wasting of such things as they have in their possession. . . . Which commissioners must have secret commission most secretly and groundly to examine all the religious of their conversation and behaviour in their livings, whereby if it be well handled, he shall get knowledge of all their abominations; and that once gotten, he with the chief of the noble men, agreeing with them for the distribution of some of the lands of the abbeys to be divided to himself and among them, which shall be to their great profit and honour, 1 The letters are calendared unobtrusively in LP, xv, 136 and xvm, i, 364, but have escaped comment, since they appear long after the Suppression. The earlier is in Nat. Lib. Scot. Advocates, MSS. 33, 3. 10, the later in B.M. Addit. 32650, fo. 123. They are cited in the text from M. St C. Byrne, The Letters of King Henry the Eighth, 288—9, 3I5~1^*

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2Of

and also admitting the bishops into the plan, with the promise of * some augmentation* of their * small portions', he shall take care 'to allot a good portion of those lands of the abbeys to the augmentation of the state of the king*. If he acts thus, and makes a reasonable provision for the entertainment of the religious men now being in them, and for term of their lives, the proceeding to the execution in the suppression of the same will be the more easy and facile among such as will understand the truth. Whether or no this advice follows exactly the course of Henry's own decisions a few years earlier, or whether, like lesser men, the king is simplifying the story of a lucky deal which had given unexpected results, it is at least permissible to conclude that neither the desire nor the hope of reforming the religious of England had any part in determining the actions of Henry and Cromwell in the years preceding the Act of Suppression of 1536. It will probably never be possible for the historian to show by documentary evidence the precise degree of responsibility of Thomas Cromwell for initiating, planning and expediting the downfall of the monasteries. Henry, the effective as well as the titular head of the state, must have known and acquiesced in the scheme as it unfolded, even if we suppose that in his notes to Scotland he was claiming as his own a successful plan of Cromwell's when his minister was no longer able to vindicate it for himself. Yet it is possible that the Dissolution would have taken place less violently and less rapidly had another than Cromwell been in power. One of the most perplexing traits in Henry's complex character is the readiness with which he allowed those whom he trusted for the moment—his grandmother and his wife early in the reign, and Wolsey and Cromwell in later years—not only to execute but also to originate and plan high policy. Self-willed, obstinate and able as he was, resourceful as he always showed himself in self-defence, he nevertheless, whether from indolence or lack of invention or a still more carefully concealed sense of insecurity, allowed his two greatest ministers to commit him long and deeply to courses of action which in different ways brought odium and imminent disaster upon him. It was as if, once convinced of the absolute fidelity and ability of a servant, he allowed him to set the course and hold the wheel through dangerous waters until, without a warning, the captain came on deck to throw the helmsman into the surf. Certainly, no one who studies the policy and administrative acts of the two decades from 1520 to 1540 can fail to note the very great change, not only in external aims, but in mental climate, between the essentially traditional, orthodox, unbloody rule of the cardinal, and the revolutionary, secular and ruthlessly bloodstained decade of his successor. In the manner of the destruction of the monasteries everything bears the mark of Cromwell rather than of the king; to Cromwell supreme power was delegated, he could use it as he would.

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CHAPTER XVII

THE E N D OF THE OBSERVANTS The fate of the Observants was closely linked with that of Elizabeth Barton. Early in the reign of Henry VIII, as has been recorded above, a prelate of the black monks had complained of the strictness of the reforming regulations of Wolsey. It was not given to all, he said, to emulate the austerity of the Carthusians, of the Bridgettines, or of the Franciscan Observants.1 The collocation of these three bodies is significant: it was precisely they who, in different ways and tempers, opposed the designs of the king and were in consequence silenced or dispersed by authority before the general assault was delivered upon all the religious orders. Of the three, the Observants were the first to challenge Henry, and they were to prove at once more vocal, more violent and more unanimous in their opposition than any other order. The Observants were the only representatives in England of the reforming movements of the later Middle Ages which had given birth to a number of new and zealous organizations among the monks and friars. In origin one of the successive waves of fervour which in every century had endeavoured to spiritualize and rejuvenate the institute of St Francis, the Observants had, as we have already seen, counted in their number three of the great Franciscan luminaries of the fifteenth century, St Bernardine of Siena, St James della Marchia, and St John Capistran. The English province, which had increased to seven houses with a population of some two hundred religious, was closely connected with the order abroad and was visited regularly by foreign superiors; the early history of the order had given them living connection with Rome. A certain number of French and Flemish friars were members of the province, but the composition of the whole body was predominantly English.* They had a tradition of strict observance, uncompromising if uncultured theological orthodoxy, and a forthright bluntness of speech that was in striking contrast to the conventional outlook of the majority of the other friars of England and to the tendency towards the new heretical theology shown by individuals. They were, in a word, most 'Catholic' in temper, resembling very nearly the Spanish and other Latin friars of the time; no doubt it was this kinship of feeling that attracted Queen Katharine and her household so strongly to them; Observants were always her confessors, both at Court and in her last phase of retirement; when at Green1 MC, III, no. 283, p. 124 (v. supra, p. 159). 2 Some writers have asserted the contrary, but the names of the friars who took a leading part in the struggle are all English, as are all save two or three of the list of 143 in LP, VII (1534), 1607. Peto (Peyto, Petow) appears to have been English; he was related to Sir George Throckmorton.

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wich she attended their Office, and in her will she left directions for her burial in one of their churches.1 Of their seven convents the two near London were the most notable. That at Richmond was in close touch with the Carthusians of Sheen and the Bridgettines of Isleworth. That at Greenwich, another royal foundation, lay by the palace and supplied preachers and confessors to the court; thus during the divorce negotiations Father John Forest was confessor and director to the queen, while Father William Peto, the Provincial, was confessor to the Princess Mary. Henry himself, in the early years of his reign, had favoured the Observants, and forwarded a petition on their behalf to Leo X.* The Roman sympathies of the order, their personal relations with the queen and her daughter as well as with More, Fisher and Reynolds, and, it may be added, the outspoken bluntness of approach to questions which the more sophisticated or the more cautious treated with reserve, all combined to make of the Observants ardent opponents of the royal divorce. Their opposition to the king's will, manifested already in the connection of Fathers Rich and Risby with Elizabeth Barton, came to a head on Easter Sunday, 31 March 1532, at the moment of crisis when the clergy were about to submit; Peto, the provincial, openly indicted the king's passion and his evil counsellors in a sermon at Greenwich at which members of the court were present. Henry, as was his way in this, the irresolute phase of his reign which was rapidly drawing to a close, summoned the critic to an interview in which Peto once more spoke his mind. At the same time he obtained permission to go abroad, ostensibly to attend the chapter at Toulouse, actually, it would seem, to arrange for the publication in the Low Countries of a treatise against the divorce which rumour said had been written by the bishop of Rochester. In his absence the king put up Dr Curwen, one of his chaplains, to preach at Greenwich in a sense contrary to Peto. Curwen permitted himself to wish that his adversary were there to answer him, whereupon, like the ghost in the play, Father Elstow the warden appeared in the rood-loft and offered to respond for his minister. Further exchanges took place between the two before the sermon ended, greatly to the king's annoyance, and when Peto returned, after no long absence, he was commanded to deprive Elstow of office. On his refusal, both were imprisoned; it was on this occasion that Peto is reported to have met a threat of drowning with the reply that the way to heaven was as short by water as by land.3 A fortnight later Henry was writing to Rome for a commission to try the two. while Chapuys and the Papal Nuncio were putting in a counter 1 Cf. Katharine's will in LP, x (1536), 40; for the visits of Observants to her in retirement, v. LP, vi, 889; Rich, Peto, Curzon, Robinson and Forest are among the names given in various documents. 2 LP, 1 (1513), 4871; Ellis, O.L. ser. 111, i, 66. 3 Chapuys describes the incident in LP, v (1532), 941. The chroniclers also mention it with some inaccuracies, e.g. Stow, 4nnals, 559 (ed. 1615).

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SUPPRESSION AND DISSOLUTION 1

plea. In the event, Peto and Elstow were released, and immediately crossed the Channel for Antwerp, where they continued their activities of all kinds against the divorce and were in frequent communication with the convent of Greenwich.2 Elstow was succeeded as warden by another of the same opinions and an even more intransigent temper, Father John Forest, Queen Katharine's confessor. The majority of the Observants throughout the country undoubtedly were of their provincial's way of thinking; besides Elstow, Forest, Rich and Risby two others, Fathers Robinson and Curzon, were steadfast in opposition and were elected 'discreets* of Richmond and Southampton.3 Superiors were in consequence bidden to enforce conformity, or at least silence, where necessary; as their public utterances show, they did not mince matters, and it is unlikely that difficult subjects were handled with any squeamishness. There were certainly cases of imprisonment and apostasy, and shortly before Peto's clash with the king one Raynscroft died in durance at Greenwich, his end perhaps hastened by his confinement. Nevertheless, the province held together in a truly remarkable way, and though Cromwell's papers contain a memorandum showing a list of leading friars reputed to be for or against Peto, no real rift took place before the final dispersal.4 There were, however, at Greenwich, the centre of things, two malcontents whom Cromwell encouraged as agents and informers.5 In the sequel both left the order, but in the years 1532-3 each was responsible for a considerable amount of mischief-making. The first of these was a priest, John Lawrence, whose extant correspondence with Cromwell and the king opens at the crisis of the opposition to the divorce in the spring of 1532. Lawrence, who complained of ill-treatment in his convent for his defence of the king, and who was ready to preach in favour of the divorce, delated his superiors and brethren to Henry and Cromwell without scruple, and also passed on to them the decisions of the provincial chapter. Forest and one Robinson were his especial enemies; the former eventually forbade him to write to Cromwell or the king. Before the end of the year he is found applying to Cromwell for a dispensation. Lawrence's letters become infrequent at the end of 1532, but the tale is immediately taken up by Richard Lyst, who introduces himself as a supporter of Lawrence against Forest. Lyst had been a servant of Wolsey and later a grocer and apothecary in Cheapside. He had also some connection with Anne Boleyn, to whom he wrote asking for money and 1 Chapuys in LP, v, 989. In spite of this friction the king is found authorizing alms of £6. ly. 4J. to the Observants in chapter at Richmond in the autumn of 1532 (LP, v, 1346). Cf. also LP, vi, 1057. 2 LP, vi (1533), 726, 899-902, 917, 934. 3 LP, v, 1259. 4 LP, v, 1312. This list must date from before May 1532, as Elstow figures as warden of Greenwich. Forest, rather strangely, appears among those contra Petow. 5 For letters of Lawrence and Lyst, v. index of LP, v-vi. Some are printed by Ellis, OL. ser. in, ii, ccix-ccxiv.

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promising Masses. He had become a lay brother, since he was ineligible for orders owing to an existing contract of marriage; he was now free, the lady having died. Restless, neurotic and unhappy, he was prepared to accuse his superior, Forest, of having murdered Raynscroft in prison. He delated Forest's interviews with the king to Cromwell and demanded to see Henry before the warden's next visit; * if the King had followed my advice', he remarked, * things would have been better ordered,'1 adding later that 'it would be a meritorious deed if you had Forest removed to Newcastle or Newark'.2 In default of external assistance Lyst acted himself, and when the newly appointed French Commissary visited Greenwich he was presented with a 'long pistyll' of Forest's misdeeds. The warden was, in the event, removed to the North, probably owing to the commissary's desire to placate the king, but Lyst, who had repeatedly urged both this and the transference of the whole convent across the Thames, did not stay to enjoy freedom from Forest's supervision; within ten days of sending the news to Cromwell he left the order and was to be found, six months later, studying at Cambridge for the secular priesthood.3 As for Lawrence, after an absence of some months he proposed to return to the cloister, but fearing ill-treatment, asked Cromwell for the position of superior at Canterbury or Richmond, not, he was anxious to assure him, for reasons of private ambition, but in order to advance the king's honour.4 Forest may well have been relieved to depart from Greenwich, but the Observants as a body maintained their ground with remarkable unanimity and determination, and neither the exile of Peto and Elstow, and the disgrace of Forest in 1532, nor the arrest and execution of Rich and Risby in 1534, had any marked effect in shaking them. They were, in common with the other orders of friars, singled out for early attention by Cromwell, owing to their influence as special and itinerant preachers. Instructions were given that all must be examined separately, take an oath of allegiance to Henry, Anne and their issue, acknowledge the king's supremacy and deny that of the pope, and make a number of further undertakings.* Though all others yielded, the Observants held firm. At Eastertide Pecock, the warden of Southampton, was 'wanted' by Cromwell for a sermon upholding papal supremacy delivered at Winchester on Passion Sunday; he was duly sent up by the mayor of Southampton, but apparently gave a satisfactory explanation.6 In May, Legh and Bedyll failed, as it would seem, to extract the oath from Richmond and a fortiori from Greenwich.? 1 LP, vi (1533), 116 (4 February): ' I can take my natiral rest scarce two nights in the week, and I fear sickness.' Ibid, vi, 512 (20 May): 'I am fearfully troubled various ways in the night, and can get no rest.' 2 LP, vi, 334 (12 April, Holy Saturday). 3 LP, vi, 1264 (12 October). He hoped to serve God thus *with more quietness' than was possible among the friars. 4 LP, VII (1534), 139. 5 LPy VII, 587, xviii (commission of visitation to George Browne and John Hilsey); ibid. VII, 590 (instructions to visitors). 6 LP, VII, 448-50, 472-3. 7 LPy VII, 622. The wardens of Richmond and Canterbury had been executed only a few weeks previously (20 April).

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A month later the pair tried their fortune again, and after parleying persuaded the community of Richmond to commit the decision to their four 'discreets'; the outcome is not clear. The commissioners then proceeded to Greenwich, but here the convent was unanimous in its refusal either to agree to the articles proposed or to commit the decision to delegates. They were above all firm in refusing to abandon papal supremacy, alleging a passage from their Rule which assumed it. To this argument Legh and Bedyll made three mutually incompatible answers, but had finally to complain to Cromwell that 'all this reason could not sink into their obstinate heads'.1 At precisely the same time Hilsey, Cromwell's commissioner to the friars in general, was chasing a couple of Newark Observants from Bristol through Devon and Cornwall and back again to Cardiff, whither they had shipped themselves in secular attire. There, they were arrested by the authorities and taken up to Westminster, but their captor still felt danger in keeping the slippery pair 'so near the sanctuary'. They were accused of upholding the pope and condemning the king's new marriage. In particular, it was alleged that when asked, as assistants at Princess Elizabeth's baptism, whether the infant had been christened in cold water or hot, they had replied 'in hot, but it was not hot enough'. Despite their bravado, they broke under durance and denied that they had spoken against the king.2 The different activities of these and other Observants, who were liable at any moment to voice from pulpit or parish-cross sentiments which many of their auditors had long been cherishing in their bosoms, must have caused intense annoyance to Henry and Cromwell. They hesitated no longer to take drastic action, and on 17 June two cartloads of friars were driven to the Tower.3 By 11 August 1534, Chapuys could write to his master that of the seven houses of Observants five had already been emptied for refusing to acknowledge the royal supremacy, and that the remaining two were expecting orders to go.4 A little more than a fortnight later a clean sweep had been made, and the same observer noted that the friars were in chains in various convents of other orders and were being hardly treated.* An interesting letter fell into Cromwell's hands from a London friar imprisoned with a companion for refusing the oath; they wished to know whether their brethren who were still in London had sworn.6 From a slightly later period a list survives giving the names of one hundred and forty friars: of these forty-odd are in confinement in monasteries or with ecclesiastical or lay magnates; thirty have fled to Scotland or abroad; thirty-six are 'exempt', and thirty-one have died.7 The manner of the deaths of the last group is not specified, but the number 1 3 5 7

LP, LP, LP, LP,

VII, 841 (15 June). VII, 856 (19 June). VII, 1095 (19 August). VII, 1607.

2 LP, vn, 939 (3 July); 1020, 1652. 4 LP> vn, 1057 (11 August). 6 Z P , v n , 1307 (written at Stamford, 25 October).

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211

is too large to represent the normal toll of nature, and the tradition that these died in prison from hardship and torture is very probable. Thomas Bourchier, who was a member of the Greenwich friary restored by Queen Mary, relates the incidents of a number of martyrdoms about this time, among which are those of Anthony Brockby, a scholar of distinction in past years at Magdalen College, Oxford, who was severely tortured before his death by strangulation in prison; others were Thomas Cortt, who had preached against die king, and Thomas Belchian, who had written against the divorce.1 The number of these victims will never be known, nor even their names. They died untried and uncondemned. Their end was without honour: but they should be counted among those who witnessed even unto death the faith they had received. The king refounded Greenwich, presumably with Friars Minor, and the community existed for a few years until it passed away with the rest of the province.2 1 Accounts of these are in Bourchier, Historia Ecclesiastica de Martyrio Fratrum (ed. 1582), 11—17. His pages, though inaccurate in details, are probably reliable for the main facts. Cf. A. G. Little in VCH, Kent, 11, 197; he inclines to identify Brockby with Browne (v. infra, p. 371). 2 LP, xii, i, 795 (44);'ibid,XIII, ii, 34.

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CHAPTER XVIII

SYON The second of the religious bodies regarded by the black monks of Wolsey's day as examples of rigid observance was that of the Bridgettines, represented in England by a single house, Syon abbey on Thames-side, between the villages of Isleworth and Brentford. The community, as has been noted in an earlier volume, had been in existence for little more than a century when Cardinal Wolsey died.1 It was extremely wealthy, with a net income, far exceeding that of any other nunnery, of £1735, which gave it the tenth place in order of revenue among all the religious houses of the kingdom. The large numbers had been maintained, and the vocation continued to attract recruits from the first families of the land. The house was distinguished not only by its good observance, but by its informed devotional life, based largely upon the spiritual writers of the late medieval period, including the English mystical writers of the fourteenth century; it possessed a magnificent library, particularly rich in modern religious works,2 and the brethren were in close contact with the Carthusians across the river at Sheen, and with those of the House of the Salutation in London. The community was by statute made up of sixty nuns (including a small number of lay sisters) and twenty-five religious brethren (of whom seventeen were in holy orders), and in the early sixteenth century it fell little short of this total. In the lists which survive from 1518 and 15393 many well-known family names appear among the nuns. The prioress in both years was Margaret Windsor, sister to Lord Windsor, and the names of Scrope, Strickland, Nevill, Brereton, Conyers, Fitzherbert, Bourchier, Newdigate, Tresham, Montague, Fettiplace, Knottesford, Monington and Vaux are at once a clear indication of the circles from which the house drew its recruits and a strangely complete epitome of recusant lists of a succeeding age. The religious men who acted as chaplains and directors to the nuns were of a type very different from the covey of nondescript clerics who 1 For the foundation of Syon, v. RO, 11, 176—81. For further incidents in the early history of the house, the most useful work (pending the appearance of the article in the relevant volume of VCH, Middlesex) is still G. J. Aungier, History of Syon Monastery, etc. This work, which is largely concerned with the topography of Isleworth, contains only a brief and incomplete account of Syon; it is, however, carefully compiled and there are useful appendices of records and documents which are not to be found in full elsewhere. There is no adequate recent monograph on medieval Syon. Mr F. R. Johnston (for whose thesis on the cult of St Bridget, v. RO, 11, 387) has for some years been engaged on research for a work of this kind, and has kindly allowed me to see an annotated list of the brethren that he has compiled. 2 For this, v. RO, 11, 347-8. It should perhaps be repeated that this great collection of books was for the use of the brethren. The nuns no doubt had a smaller and more conventional selection of books. 3 Aungier, History of Syon, 81, 89.

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celebrated the liturgy and dispensed the sacraments at many of the larger nunneries. They were recruited principally from the small class of academic clergy, or from beneficed priests who wished for a stricter life, and not from local sources. Fellows of colleges had from the beginning left Oxford and Cambridge for Syon, and in the second and third decades of the sixteenth century the brethren reckoned among their number several of intellectual distinction who had entered the order with a university degree and often after several years in the priesthood. In this the Bridgettines resembled the Carthusians, but there was a difference between them. Whereas the Carthusians were by profession solitaries, and only by exception scholars or divines, the Bridgettines had, at least in England, a constant tradition of learning. They formed, indeed, a group without parallel in Tudor England; men who combined personal austerity of life with theological or devotional competence, and who by their books, by their direction of a fervent and aristocratic nunnery, and by their influence as counsellors and confessors of leading laymen, were a power to be reckoned with in a religious world which contained all too few centres of enlightened piety. In the early sixteenth century, when Cambridge had in many ways taken the leadership from Oxford in things of the spirit, it was from Cambridge that the Bridgettines came. During the last thirty years of Syon's life, at least six Fellows of Cambridge colleges joined the community, and during the century of Syon's existence at least six Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge. These men brought with them their books, which they left to the house at their death. Among them were John Fewterer,1 sometime (1506) Fellow of Pembroke and later confessorgeneral; John Copynger,2 Fellow in 1511 of Christ's College; William Bond or Bunde,3 Fellow in 1506 of Pembroke, who died in 1530; and Richard Lache,4 Fellow in 1523 of St John's College, Cambridge. Fewterer, though an ambiguous figure in his last years, had a high reputation in the early years of trouble; he had been the trusted confidant of Fisher, More and Houghton. Two, however, stood out from the rest, Richard Whytford and Richard Reynolds. Whytford,* who came from a landed family of Flintshire, had been a Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1495 and chaplain, first to William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, and next to Bishop Foxe of Winchester. 1 For Fewterer, v. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, I, ii, 135, and M. Bateson, Catalogue of the Library of Syon Monastery, Isleworth, xvi, xxiv. 2 For Copynger, v. Venn, 1, i, 396; Bateson, 115, xxiv. 3 Venn, 1, i, 177; Bateson, xxiii. 4 Venn, 1, iii, 33. He died rector of Fakenham, Norfolk. 5 Whytford has received a passing mention in numberless works, but still awaits adequate treatment. Meanwhile, reference may be made to DNB, Venn, I, iv, 393, and the editions of his printed works; also to HarpsfieUTs Life of More (ed. Hitchcock and Chambers), notes 16,19/21 (p. 310); H. S. Bennett, English Books and Readers, 147 5 to 1557, esP-163—4; and E. M. Nugent, The thought and culture of the English Renaissance, 376-83. [See now note at end of chapter, p.221.]

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SUPPRESSION AND DISSOLUTION

In the last years of the reign of Henry VII he was the close friend of both Erasmus and More,1 and he is said, in a well-known anecdote, to have warned the latter not to trust his episcopal patron.2 He joined the community of Syon c. 1507, when he was already some forty years old, and thenceforward devoted himself to literary work for the benefit of his fellow-countrymen. He was a prolific writer, with fifteen or so works, either original or translations from Latin, to his credit. They include versions of the Rule of St Augustine, of the Sarum martyrology,3 of St Bernard's Depraecepto et dispensatione {The Pype or Tonne of the lyfe of perfection), as also two treatises for lay people or 'householders', the one a short 'introduction to the devout life'4 and the other an instruction for preparation for Holy Communion. The majority were printed by Robert Redman or Wynkyn de Worde. Whytford, who habitually refers to himself as 'the wretch of Syon' or 'the old wretched brother of Syon', gradually developed a melodious and finely cadenced English style, which is seen at its best in the only translation of his still current, that of the Imitation of Christ.^ He was also most probably the author, or at least the effective editor and reviser, of the most popular devotional manual of the English Catholics throughout the Penal Times, the so-called Jesus Psalter? In the anecdotes that occur occasionally in his works,? and in the prefaces which he writes for his translations, glimpses of Whytford's personality may be caught. They show a man with many of the qualities of Colet and More, though without the urgency of the one or the genius of the other: conservative, distrustful of'heresy', retiring to the point of diffidence, orthodox to the full and yet with a kind of spiritual timidity and tenuity that contrasts so strongly with his Italian contemporaries St Gaetano and St Antonio Maria Zaccaria, who are on fire with an overflowing, self-effacing charity. Whytford, like his greater countrymen Fisher and More, might ennoble his age, but had no call to reform it. His most distinguished colleague at Syon, though no more of a reformer than Whytford, had more of steel in his character. Richard Reynolds,8 another Cambridge graduate and a Fellow of Corpus Christi 1 Cf. the letter of Erasmus (ep. 191, Allen, 1, 422) to Whytford in praise of More written 1 May 1506, with Allen's notes. 2 R. W. Chambers, Thomas More, 97-8. 3 Ed. Procter and Dewick, The Marttbie in Englysshe (HBS). 4 For this, v. Helen C. White, The Tudor Books of Private Devotion, 157-61. 5 His translation of the three first books of The Imitation (the fourth is by the Lady Margaret) was republished in 1872 by Dom Wilfrid Raynal and again, with useful if uncritical notes on Whytford, by Dom Roger Hudlestone in 1908.1 have not been able to see the Yale doctoral dissertations on Whytford by E. J. Klein (1937) and on Syon by Mrs E. P. Sheridan (1950). Fr. Klein has also republished The Imitation (1941). 6 No recent critical discussion of the authorship exists. The fullest is still the scholarly booklet of S. H. Sole, The Jesus Psalter. The attribution appears to go back to Anthony Wood. 7 Sole, op. cit., cites three such, one of which shows that Whytford had visited Holywell (Flints). 8 For Reynolds, v. Venn, 1, iii, 445, and The Angel of Syon, by Dom A. Hamilton. For Pole's testimony, v. Pro ecclesiastxcae unionis defensio, F. dii. The tract by Corvinus (v. infra, p. 217 n. 4) has: *vir angelico vultu omnibus gratiosus', and he continues to say that he had

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College in 1510, was as a theologian perhaps second only to Fisher in England. Like Whytford the friend of Erasmus and More, and well known to Reginald Pole during his residence at Sheen, Reynolds impressed all who knew him well alike by the depth of his learning and the unsullied purity of his life, which was reflected in a countenance to which more than one of his contemporaries applied the epithet angelical. The records are strangely silent upon the origin and early life of Richard Reynolds. He was probably of a Devonshire family distinguished by the learning of several of its members, and he may have been brother of Thomas Reynolds, dean of Exeter.1 After graduating in arts at Christ's he became Fellow of Corpus Christi and took the doctorate in divinity, but about 1515 joined the community of Syon. Adept in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, he was probably, as Pole said, the keenest intelligence among the religious of his day, combining the best qualities of the old learning and the new. He left to Syon no less than ninety-four books, a number greater than that bequeathed by any other donor. Although he does not figure as a letterwriter or correspondent in the collections of the time, his personality and the manner of his death marked him out among his fellows, and as ' the father of Syon' he took his place, along with Fisher and More, in the memories of religious conservatives, and more than two years after his execution we find Sir George Throckmorton, lately converted to the king's party by a perusal of the New Testament and the royal Institute of a Christian Man, telling Henry how Reynolds, many years since, had advised him to stick *to the death' to his opinion of the validity of the Aragon marriage, and not to hold his peace in parliament in 1532, when the anti-papal measures were being debated, even though he might think that his words would be of no avail.2 The flourishing condition of Syon, its excellent observance, its aristocratic connections and the intellectual distinction and virtue of Reynolds and Whytford and others made of it something unique in Tudor England, an orthodox Port Royal, a key position in the religious life of the country. When the divorce was mooted, Syon was all but solid in opposition. Reynolds was in the counsels of More and Fisher, so far as they admitted anyone to their confidence, and various depositions in the next few years show that, besides the religious, a group of dependants and neighbours were among the king's severest critics. The various negotiations and stratagems employed to persuade the two families of Syon to take the oaths to the Act of Succession and the Royal known Reynolds when in England in the suite of Cardinal Campeggio. For other tributes, v. LP, VIII, 666 (Chapuys to Charles V); ibid. 786 (Dr Ortiz to the Empress): 'a very learned man*; ibid. 616 (Cranmer to Cromwell): 'a learned man*, and ibid. 801 (Starkey to Pole, a letter written at the king's command to explain the execution):' Reynolds, whom I have often heard praised by y o u . . . a man of such virtue and learning.* 1 This conjecture (based on some evidence) was first made by Dom A. Hamilton, The

Angel of Syon. 2 LP, XII (ii), 952.

2l6

SUPPRESSION AND DISSOLUTION

Supremacy can be seen only by glimpses, and it is difficult to reconstruct the whole story from the scattered letters that have survived. These are, however, numerous enough to show that Syon, though ultimately yielding at least a tacit consent, struggled long in the clutch of circumstance, that both the king and Cromwell set great store by its submission, and that to achieve their end they were willing to go through a long and tortuous process of persuasion, oppression and intimidation. As early as the beginning of January 1534, Stokesley, bishop of London and ordinary of the community, was enlisted by Cromwell in an endeavour to get some sort of signed approval of the king's second marriage out of Syon. The ubiquitous Bedyll and one Mores or Morris, a lay steward of the house, were also in the business which broke down, at least in its earliest form, through the unwillingness of Stokesley to subscribe to an inaccurate statement drawn up by Bedyll, and an equal unwillingness on the part of the nuns to sign an alternative draft.1 Early in May Rowland Lee and Bedyll, who had failed in their first attempt to persuade the London Carthusians to take the oath of Succession, but who had been more effective at Sheen, were preparing to try their fortune at Syon.2 There is no record of the issue, but though there is no certificate of any oaths received, and though it is difficult to suppose that Reynolds took the oath, it is equally difficult to suppose that Syon was allowed to remain unsworn. For almost a year (May 1534-April 1535) nothing is heard of Syon, save that in the early autumn of the former year the nuns received a visit from Queen Anne, then lying at Richmond. The only record of this is in a late and partisan account, composed with the purpose of vindicating a place in the movement of Reform for Queen Elizabeth's mother, but the fact of the visit may be accepted, the more so as the obvious reluctance of the ladies of Syon to admit the royal visitor, whom most of them would have regarded as an unprincipled adventuress, is made clear enough. It is not, however, necessary to believe that they were as speedily converted to the light of the gospel by her dark eyes and * sweet words' as the narrator suggests, or that they immediately substituted the English Primers which she distributed in choir for the Latin psalter and antiphonary.3 It is most unfortunate that no information exists of the events leading up to, and immediately following, the arrest of Reynolds in the spring of 1535, for his name is absent from all the letters written from Syon. He was presumably chosen for severe treatment like the Carthusians owing to his resolute refusal to admit the royal supremacy, and an endeavour was made to break up the nest of discontent on the fringe of 1 LP9

VII, 15, 22.

2 Ibid. 622.

3 This incident is described by William Latimer the younger (chaplain to Queen Elizabeth) in a sketch of Anne Boleyn's career preserved in Bodleian MS. Don. c. 42. Written forty years after the event it is tendentious but is presumed to contain a kernel of fact. It is cited by C. Butterworth, The English Primers (1529-45), 54-5.

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1

Isleworth. Feron, a young man of the neighbourhood, and John Hale, an aged priest of the place, were arrested and examined, while Henry himself had interviewed Morris, the steward, whom he apparently distrusted or suspected of some sort of collusion with Stephen Gardiner, then under a cloud. When Morris failed to give satisfaction, he was handed over to Cromwell to be * groped'.2 Of the circumstances leading up to the arrest of Reynolds nothing is known, but we know from his own words that he was lodged in the Tower on 20 April, the day on which the three Carthusian priors were finally examined.3 When interrogated, Reynolds spoke with exceptional self-possession and force.4 He would seem to have been less affected than most of his contemporaries by the paralysis that invaded all who opposed the king; he was doubtless well aware of his superiority to his judges in theological learning and sincerity; his words were therefore fearless and trenchant. He meant no malice to the king, he said, but would spend his blood in the pope's cause; whoever might oppose him in the England of that day, he had with him a thousand thousand of the past.5 Later, when on trial before Audley and others, he was asked why he remained obstinate against so many peers and prelates. He replied that if it were a question of reasons, his were stronger than theirs; if of numbers, all Christendom was on his side, and the larger part of England itself, though many through fear or through ambition professed the contrary. At this point Cromwell asked with some interest for the names of those who were with him. 'All good men of the kingdom', replied Reynolds, and he continued to assert that the king was in error and that certain bishops had misled him. This was not the kind of information the judges wished for, and he was ordered to be silent. He answered with dignity: 'If you do not wish me to speak further, proceed with the judgment according to your law/ When condemned to death he asked for three days in which to prepare for his end. He had lived in the Tower away from regular observance, he said, but he 1 John Hale, vicar of Isleworth, an elderly man executed with Reynolds, was condemned on a different charge, that of seditious conversation and criticism of the king's second marriage. Robert Feron, a young clerk of Teddington, and Scudamore of Syon were also in the party, and there was a good deal of counter-accusation among them when examined; Hale was executed, Feron pardoned (LP, vm, 802 (5), 565, 567). 2 Z.PjVin, 592 (Henry to Cromwell, 7 May, with Morris's answers). He was as compliant as could be desired, and opined that ' the Holy Ghost is as present at such an act [i.e. the passing of the Act of Supremacy] as ever He was at any General Council'. He apparently endeavoured, not unsuccessfully, to run with the community of Syon and hunt with Bedyll; the latter commends him warmly more than once (v. LP, vm, 1125). 3 According to the Italian account (JLP, vm, 661) Reynolds on 29 April said he had been in the Tower for eight days. The tract in Historia martyrum (v. infra, n. 4) gives 15 April as the date of his first examination. 4 The fullest account of Reynolds's examination is in a Vatican MS. given in LP, vm, 661; details are added in the letter {ibid. 1096) of (probably) Philippe Dumont. The tract, de D. Reginaldi Theologi martyrw, which along with others precedes M. Chauncy's Passio Major, is not by him but is based upon the two accounts just mentioned. 5 LP, vm, 566: 'He also says that he doth this as thousand thousand that be dead.' These, doubtless ipsissima verba of Reynolds, occur in an official memorandum.

2l8

SUPPRESSION AND DISSOLUTION

wished to make himself ready for death as a religious should. He had his wish, and went forth joyfully with the Carthusians on 4 May. At Tyburn he was the last to be executed. According to a reliable narrative, he encouraged the Carthusians during the butchery. He was noted as a preacher, and when his turn came he spoke to the people at length with calmness and eloquence. It was probably his sermon that provoked the wrath of Henry and led him to give less publicity to future executions. Then he died, like the Carthusians, with heroic fortitude. In equanimity, in strength of character, and in constancy he takes rank with More and Fisher among the noblest of the age. He was the first to die of that trinity of lucid intelligence and holy life who were found intolerable by their king and removed from among men within two summer months, because they were contrary to his doings. When next the community of Syon is seen again, almost two months have gone by since the death of Reynolds, and Bedyll and Stokesley are trying to ascertain the state of feeling among the religious. They have * found the lady abbas and susters as conformable in every thing as myght be devysed', and the confessor-general and 'ffather Cursone, which be the saddest men ther and best learned', showing themselves 'like honest men*. Two of the brethren, however, were stubborn, and might need, in Bedyll's phrase, to be 'weeded out*. These were presumably Whytford and Lache.1 A month later he reported that the abbess and nuns were satisfied with the king's title of Supreme Head and that the confessorgeneral, Fewterer, had preached and had 'done his duty* (i.e. had *set forth* the title), but that Whytford had preached without reference to the king's headship, and that when one Ricot had prayed for the king as Supreme Head nine of the brethren, including Copynger, had walked out of the church. In Bedyll's view Whytford and Lache (Leeke, Legge) were 'heads of their faction', and should be 'attached'. There was a possibility, Bedyll added, that some of the brethren might attempt to run away to avoid the strain of the situation. In his opinion, 'if they did so, so men shuld never here tidings of theim, nouther know where they became, it were no greate lost'.* In the sequel, Whytford would seem to have been left at liberty, but there is some evidence that Lache was in the Tower for a time.3 Despite BedyU's optimistic opinion of the 'honesty' of all concerned at Syon, matters had progressed little in December, when Cromwell himself went down but met with small success. It would seem that since Reynolds's execution no actual violence had been used to bend or break 1 LPt viii, 1125 (Bedyll to Cromwell, 28 July), also in Wright, SL, xvi. 2 LPy VII, 1090 (Bedyll to Cromwell, 28 August). This is printed by Aungier, History of Syon Monastery', 435—8, with inaccurate date. In LP this letter is erroneously printed (following the date given by Aungier) under the year 1534. The mistake is noted in Z P , ix, 200. Bedyll, in the later letter, clearly refers to his visit with Stokesley described in the letter of 28 July. 3 LP, VII, 756 (misplaced in 1534; W. H. (? W. Kingston]) to Fewterer): 'Mr Legge your chaplain was sent to the Tower, by commandment of Mr Secretary Cromwell.*

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those who still refused to swear to the king's new title. Layton tried his hand in mid-December, using the methods he had found profitable elsewhere, and swept together a number of charges against one Bishop, who had long been a source of tribulation to Fewterer and Copynger by his irregular ways. He now added to the prevailing state of tension by declaring the king's title in a sermon to a church full of people, whereupon one of the lay brothers * openly called him a false knave'. Layton then went on to supply some details of an alleged intrigue of Bishop with one of the nuns which involved breaking the convent grates with the assistance of a clumsy accomplice; he adds, more suo^ with a glance at his unctuous colleague, that had Mr Bedyll been in the plot he would have brought the matter to a successful issue with far less ado—'such capacity hath God sent him'. 1 The worthy Bedyll, for his part, less than a week later gave a further account of Syon. The brethren, he said, were still obstinate, and as Cromwell's presence had proved unavailing other help had been enlisted—on Tuesday Dr Butts the king's physician together with 'the quenys amner' to 'convert' Whytford and Little, and on Wednesday a batch of no less than four doctors of divinity sent down by the king himself. Syon was indeed taken even more seriously than the Charterhouse. When all else had failed with Whytford Bedyll himself 'handled him in the garden both with fair words and foul', accusing him of soliciting the nuns in confession, and thereby furnishing an occasion for the abolition of auricular confession throughout England. Whytford, however, was not to be terrified. 'He hath a brazen forehead, which shameth at nothing', the shocked archdeacon concluded, and he had to be content with forbidding Whytford and Little to hear the nuns' confessions. Bedyll then summoned Lord Windsor to do his best with his sister, the prioress, and finally Stokesley and Fewterer attended in the nuns' chapterhouse and ' took it upon their consciences and the peril of their souls that the ladies ought to consent to the king's tide', and repeating Warham's expedient of 1532 they 'willed all such as consented to the king's title to sit still', while dissidents retired. None was found to depart, though ' one Agnes Smyth, a sturdy dame and a wylful' later in the day 'laboured diverse of her susters that we should not have their convent seal'.2 In the same letter Bedyll stated that Copynger and Lache had been sent to stay with Stokesley. When there, Copynger had an interview with Cromwell, and Stokesley wrote that he had been 'continually labouring' with him and was hopeful as to the result, especially if Bishop, whose 'irreligiosity' troubled him, could be removed.3 His hopes were justified; Copynger and 1 LP, ix, 954; Wright, SL, xvii; Aungier, 85-6 (Layton to Cromwell, 12 December). 2 LP, ix, 986; Wright, SL, xviii; Aungier, 87-8 (Bedyll to Cromwell, 17 December). The Queen's almoner was John Skip, later (1539) bishop of Hereford. A letter from Rygote (Ricot) to the king asking for a dispensation is in LP, vu, 1092; this probably belongs to 1535 or 1536. Rigot is not among those pensioned in 1539. 3 LP, VIII, 77 (21 January 1536= 1535 o.s.). This letter is wrongly put under 1535; it is clearly a sequel to that of Bedyll on 17 December 1535.

22O

SUPPRESSION AND DISSOLUTION

Lache capitulated and shortly afterwards wrote at length to the brethren of the London Charterhouse urging them to submit and pressing them with reasons. To this letter the confessor-general Fewterer added a postscript of approval.1 Thenceforward little is heard of Syon in Cromwell's correspondence, though in September 1536 Copynger is found writing to the vicar-general thanking him for the books he has sent, one of which is being read to the brethren at dinner.2 Any literature recommended by Cromwell may be assumed to have had a tendentious character; perhaps the Defensor Paris, which had failed to impress the Carthusians, was now sent down to Isle worth. A few days after this letter had been written the confessorgeneral, Fewterer, left; Copynger was appointed in his room, and showed himself adequately subservient. For a year or more the brethren had been banned from preaching; when the new confessor-general applied for permission, shortly after a visit from Cromwell in June 1537, he reminded the vicar-general that the disciples of Christ had received grace by the coming of the Holy Ghost and then did preach; the implication that Cromwell's visit might be followed by a similar outpouring of grace shows sufficiently how far Copynger had moved since the days of Reynolds.3 Nevertheless, authority still remained curiously indulgent to Syon, possibly because any harsh treatment of such a numerous and high-born community would have produced repercussions throughout court and government circles that might have been hard to control. In the event, Syon fell by means of a legal quibble. In June 1537, the steward, John Morris, was knocked up one morning by the constables of Brentford, who had arrested Sir William Knotton, a professed priest of Syon, in the purlieus of the village. Sir William, who had found the religious duties irksome, had 'departed thence over the walls' and explained to the watch that he was going to see Cromwell to ask for a release.4 Nothing more is heard of this for almost a year; then, on 29 May 1538, Stokesley was served with a writ charging him with violating 16 Richard II, c. 5 (Praemunire) and 28 Henry VIII, c. 10, the Act extinguishing the authority of the bishop of Rome.5 He had, it seems, taken the profession of William Knotton in February 1537, and in so doing had acknowledged a papal bull and the papal name (specifically Martin V). So, of course, had every prelate present at a profession since 1 April 1420. Stokesley, after a moment of alarm, in which he wrote to Cromwell excusing himself—'you know what pains I took to persuade them of Syon to renounce the bishop of Rome'6—took the point and sued out a pardon, but the legal position had now been established. Nothing was done for eighteen months; then, probably in the early autumn of 1539, a series of jottings appears among Cromwell's 1 LP, VIII, 78, also wrongly calendared under January 1535. It is printed in full by Aungier, 430-4. 2 LP, xi, 487. 3 LP, XII, ii, 33 C$ June 1537). 4 Ibid. 6j (10 June). 5 LP, xm, i, 1095. 6 Ibid. 1096.

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' remembrances': ' Touching the monastery of Syon, the king may dissolve that bypraemunire and [=an, if] he will.' 'The monastery of Syon to come by praemunire.' 'The suppression of Syon.'1 And so, in the final sweep of the great monasteries that had refused to extinguish themselves by voluntary surrender, Syon fell under the hammer shortly before 25 November, the date on which the pensions were assigned.2 There is no record as to whether all the nuns and brethren formally took an oath to maintain 'the king's new title*. It is difficult to suppose that they escaped doing so; it is equally hard to assert that Whytford and one or two others, after their long resistance, capitulated at last. Whytford certainly received a pension, but his retirement into the household of Charles, Lord Mountjoy, the son of his old patron, where he continued to put out a series of writings wholly Catholic and conservative in character until his death, shows at least that he remained at heart a brother of Syon. As will be seen later, the sisters of Syon, in this unique among the nunneries of England, retained and made effective their desire to continue their life under their Rule. Not all the nuns, however, were thus faithful. The abbess, Agnes Jordayn, accepted and enjoyed the lavish annuity of £200, and her executors were well able to afford the handsome sepulchral brass which still commemorates her in the church of Denham. Dame Margaret Dely, the treasurer, with a mere £13 (or twice the allowance of the rank and file of the community), spent what remained of her life within sight of her old home, and her more modest brass can be seen in the church at Isleworth. I LP, xiv, ii, 424, 425.

2 Ibid. 581.

Note Since this chapter was written Whytford's authorship of the translation of the Imitation has been convincingly disproved by Professor Glanmor Williams. His article 'Two neglected London-Welsh clerics: Richard Whitford and Richard Gwent', in The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1961 Part 1, pp. 25-32, is

authoritative.

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CHAPTER XIX

THE LONDON CHARTERHOUSE AND I T S S I S T E R H O U S E S The House of the Salutation of the Mother of God at Smithfield does not appear to have been distinguished from its sisters during the fifteenth century by any superior degree of fervour. Like them, however, it had preserved intact the essentials of the Carthusian way of life, and thus provides a striking example of the reward that comes to a body of men, perhaps of no remarkable virtue, who are faithful to the prescriptions of their Rule: the coals remain alight and, though dull, may be kindled to flame by a breath of the Spirit. The London Charterhouse was to give to English monastic history one of its brightest pages, and it is possible for us to see that the heroism of so many of its sons in the hour offloodand whirlwind was no sudden impulse or unpredictable accident, but the native resistance of a fabric not built upon the sand. We are fortunate in being able to assemble, from various sources, materials which, if far from complete, are yet sufficient to enable us to reconstruct in its main lines the story of the last years.1 Among these sources one is, for better or worse, pre-eminent. The brief history of the last years of the London house, composed by one who had been a member of the family, stands alone among the documents of the time as supplying a picture drawn by a contemporary of the intimate life of a religious community immediately before the Dissolution.3 The 1 By far the fullest account of the last years of the English Carthusians is in Miss E. M. Thompson's The Carthusian Order in England, 371-485, where many of the documents, printed and unprinted, are quoted in full. A less critical narrative, which is, however, based on the sources and contains additional details, is in The London Charterhouse, by Dom Lawrence Hendriks. For an account of the buildings and the plan as revealed by the excavations of 1948-9, v. Charterhouse, by D. Knowles and W. F. Grimes. A suggestive picture of Carthusian life and relationships is given by Archbishop Mathew and Fr Gervase Mathew, O.P., in The Contemplative Life and the Reformation. 2 Dom Maurice Chauncy's Historia aliquot martyrum was first printed at Mainz in 1550 and has often been republished, though the latest reprint is the ddition de luxe of Montreuilsur-Mer of 1888; this is the edition to which references are given in these notes. It remains a rare text, and a critical edition of all the versions would be welcome. The work has a complicated history, which is not yet completely clear. Chauncy wrote his original account for the Carthusians of Val de Grace in February 1546 (not 1539, as was generally supposed till recently); this version, long thought to be lost, has recently been rediscovered by Mr H. G. Richardson, who has identified it with an anonymous account in Guildhall (London), MS. 1231. Mr Richardson is engaged on editing this text, of which Fr Andrew Gray, of St Hugh's Charterhouse, Parkminster, has kindly supplied me with a transcript. It frequently differs verbally from the printed text, but references to the latter have been retained as more convenient. Almost simultaneously Chauncy wrote a similar account for the prior of the Grande Chartreuse, in order to justify the request he and his companions were making for reception at the Charterhouse of Bruges. This latter text was the version published in 15 50, with its Latinity somewhat polished by the editor, Dom Vitus a Dulkem, and reprinted by Dom V. M. Doreau in 1888. Somefifteenyears later, in 1564, when anxious

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method and outlook of Dom Maurice Chauncy, together with the temperament and character which they reflect, fall far short of the simplicity and clarity that comes from perfect mental self-control. He is seriously deficient in critical powers and is frequently inaccurate in small matters of fact; he had a love of the marvellous, not to say of the fabulous, which exceeds all reason and conveys to the reader the probably unjustifiable impression that the whole community was equally superstitious;1 he is prolix, even in his shortest narrative, and overlays a little information with a mass of scriptural allusion. Nevertheless, there can be no question of his sincerity and general trustworthiness, and he was an eyewitness of the events he describes. To his narrative can be added a number of casual letters and documents dating from the early sixteenth century, and part at least of the dossier assembled for the processes conducted against the monks. Although the history of the London Charterhouse in the fifteenth century may not have been remarkable, the situation of the place, so different from that of the earliest and latest foundations of the province, must always have ensured a certain celebrity for its withdrawn and austere vocation. It would seem in consequence to have attracted throughout the period a steady flow of recruits with a genuine desire for a life of monastic perfection; it also attracted—as the Carthusian order has always attracted from the days of St Hugh to our own—a number of aspirants of enthusiastic or neurotic temperaments some of whom succeeded, then as now, in winning through at least the early stages of the difficult probation, to prove a source of infinite vexation to all in authority by their mental and moral vagaries, and by their graceless, spiteful or ill-grounded accusations against those who had endeavoured to wean them, and to protect others, from their habits of selfishness and irresponsibility. Among the genuine vocations of the later fifteenth century was one which perhaps did more than any other to determine the subsequent fortunes of the house; it was that of William Tynbygh or Tenbi, Irish to solicit papal support for the English Carthusian exiles, Chauncy wrote a shorter version in which some details are added, together with historical sections of a tendentious nature, while much valuable matter was omitted. Finally, in 1570, he composed yet another narrative, a somewhat expanded version of the 1564 account. The narration addressed to the prior of Val de Grace, an abridgement apparently derived from this, and the recension of 1564 (the so-called Passio Minor) have been printed by Van Ortroy in Ancdecta Bollandiana, vi, 36-51, xiv, 268-83, anc * XXII> 54-75- The recension of 1570, of which the manuscript is in private hands, was printed as The Passion and Martyrdom of the Holy English Carthusian Fathers by the Church Historical Society in 1935. For editions and manuscripts, v. E. M. Thompson, The English Carthusians, 343—52, and The Passion, etc., 30-3 (by Miss E. M. Thompson), and the introduction to the Passio Minor by Fr van Ortroy in AB, xxv. The author, Maurice Chauncy, came of a landed family in Hertfordshire; he was born in 1509 and took the monastic habit c. 1531-2. He left England to resume his religious life in 1546, was prior of the restored Sheen 1555-9 an<^ subsequently of the exiled Sheen Anglorum in the Low Countries. He died on a journey at Paris in 1581. 1 Hence, e.g., the allusion by H. A. L. Fisher in History of England, 343, to 'this somewhat morbid and superstitious community*. For Chauncy's inaccuracies see the notes to the 1888 edition and Miss Thompson, passim.

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or Anglo-Irish by race, and of good family,1 who joined the community c. 1470 and became prior in 1500, holding office for thirty years. Whatever be the facts lying behind the extraordinary story of Chauncy, who received it as a family myth when it was already sixty years old,2 Tynbygh had no doubt experienced a radical conversion as a young man, and his subsequent life was ascetic to a degree; it was no doubt he who set up in the house such a high standard of fidelity to the statutes of the order. It was shortly before Tynbygh's rule began that the young Thomas More lived in the precincts for four years; it was Tynbygh who received John Houghton into the community, and it was in his last years that there set in a remarkable flow of ardent and distinguished recruits who were to form the core of the resistance to the king in 1534. Lying as it did at the edge of the city, with its orchards and gardens running up among the town houses of the great, the Charterhouse could scarcely fail to be a centre of religious influence. The solemn devotion of the liturgy, the contrast between the silence and austerity there and the noisy, restless, ambitious and sordid whirl of the city streets, the presence within its walls of a number of men of gentle birth and high abilities, attracted to its gatehouse many of the dmes d* elite of the time, and facilities seem to have been given for those in need of spiritual direction to visit and confess themselves to the priests,3 and even to make a prolonged stay in the guest quarters. Tynbygh was succeeded by Dom John Batmanson,4 who was a man of sufficient learning to be chosen by Edward Lee, the friend of More and future archbishop of York, to criticize the edition of the New Testament by Erasmus. That hypersensitive scholar's reaction to Batmanson's attack need not be taken as a pondered judgment, but the Carthusian, who continued his work with an attack on Luther and who wrote treatises in the medieval manner on passages of Scripture, was clearly not one of the new learning and was probably no match for its masters. In any case, his rule was short. In his successor, John Houghton, the strict monastic life brought to blossom for the last time on English soil a character of the rarest strength and beauty—a last flowering, a winter rose, of English medieval monachism. When all allowance is made for the youthful hero-worship and later hagiological aim of Maurice Chauncy, the picture that emerges is of a man capable not only of inspiring devoted attachment, but of forming in others a calm judgment and a heroic constancy equal to his own. He found him1 In the story of his conversion there is an allusion to a chapel in his father's house (Historia, 74). 2 Historia, 74. Taken prisoner on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he was miraculously transported to his father's house in Ireland. The history of Tynbygh does not appear in the Passio Minor, 3 Chauncy describes the cloister as being empty during the day 'nisi aliqui saeculares colloquii gratia forruitu supervenissent' {Historia, 66). 4 There are articles in DNB of varying merit on Tynbygh, Batmanson, Boorde and Chauncy. For the confusion of two John Batmansons, v. Appendix L

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self head of a family in which youth was predominant; more than half the community were under the age of thirty-five when he began his short rule;1 no doubt they were impressionable enough. But it was not the most impressionable who followed him to the end of his journey; Chauncy and others like him were left orphans, remembering with sorrow the golden days of spring; the seventeen who did not fail had learnt from him to depend on no human guide, to fear neither sharp pain nor material want, and to be true, through all extremes of suffering and desolation, to the purpose of their profession. Hough ton had joined the Charterhouse early in the reign of Henry VIII. Sprung of gentle family in Essex, he had taken a degree in laws at Cambridge from Christ's College, but instead of embarking on a career, he had studied in retirement for the priesthood and lived for some years as a secular priest before taking the monastic habit in 1515. Seven years later he became sacrist and after five more years, to his great distress, he was appointed to the distracting office of procurator. From this he was taken, in 1530-1, to be prior of Beauvale in Nottinghamshire, but after a bare six months he was recalled by the unanimous vote of the community, in 1531, to become prior of the London house. As prior he was able to develop his character to the full. Much of Chauncy's long account of his virtues is wordy and conventional, but a few individual traits can be clearly seen.2 The prior, we are told, was reserved and somewhat stern with aspirants for the first few years of their training; with the elder fathers, jealous, as always in a strict community, of custom and precedent, he was tactful and easy of approach. Mindful of his position in public, he required an exact performance of the ceremonial of courtesy and respect; when he entered another's cell he put his dignity aside and spoke as an equal, not as a superior. His life was abstemious beyond the demands of the Rule, and he had an exceptionally deep love of the Office, in which he noticed the least haste or failure, and would even leave the choir as a sign of disapproval. An extant letter of his is witness that he followed the contemporary stream of his order's devotion, and esteemed highly Denis the Carthusian ;3 his confessor, however, was William Exmew, who is known to have prized highly the Cloud of Unknowing and its companion treatises, and the younger man may have taken his bent from his superior. Houghton was regarded as a saint by those who knew him in the years when a martyr's death for one in the London Charterhouse would have seemed an impossibility. Whatever his methods, he achieved a result rare in any religious order and most rare, 1 Historia, 58: 'Circiter enim viginti erant in illo Conventu qui annos triginta octo non attigerant.' There were thirty monks and eighteen converses (ibid. 65). 2 See Chauncy's fourth chapter De sancto et discrete regimine Prioris. 3 The letter is printed by Hendriks, The London Charterhouse, 366-8. In it Houghton writes: 'Is [sc. Dionysius] adeo corda nostra suis sacratissimis scriptis et documentis sibi allexit, ut eo carere sine gravi molestia minime possimus. Nobis etenim sapiunt opera ejus . . .prae ceteris paene omnibus sacris scriptoribus.'

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perhaps, in one long established and rooted in tradition: he joined his community to himself in a new and joyful realization of the splendour of their vocation and in an ever-fresh, never-failing hope of a still nearer approach to God. Before the sudden gathering of the clouds, when the world outside seemed full of costly splendour and empty show, and of the * packs and sets of great ones', the House of the Salutation was a green valley where those of goodwill could find pasture and clear water. In Chauncy's pages, written when the old age had gone downstream in the cataclysm, there is a poignant, if inarticulate, cry to Time to cease his passage: Verweile dock, du bist so schon.

The monks whom Houghton guided were as a body worthy of their prior. He himself looked upon them as angels of God,1 and visitors who sought of them counsel and help involuntarily echoed the words of the patriarch: * Verily God is in this place.' It was commonly said that if a man wished to hear the divine service carried out with due reverence he should visit the London Charterhouse.2 The rules of fasting and silence were kept in their strictness, and such alleviation as the fire in the cell were often forgone save in extreme cold. The night choirs in winter, when the lessons were long, began shortly after ten and lasted till three in the morning. Fear of distraction was so real among the brethren that the intention had been formed of asking the king to take over ownership of the property of the house, allowing the monks only a pension from it.3 The life of the Charterhouse, contrasting as it did so strongly with the turmoil of the city and the display of the court and of the cardinal of York, and with the worldliness of so much in the church life of the country, could not but prove a powerful magnet to what generous aspirations still existed. Chauncy tells us that many of the monks were of wealthy or distinguished family, and that many even of the lay brethren had given up property or the expectation of affluence in order to enter the house. Though his canons of distinction may have been those of a bourgeois rather than of an aristocrat, his statement can in several cases, besides that of Chauncy himself, be corroborated from his own pages or other sources. After Houghton, the figure most clearly seen is that of William Exmew. Like his prior, he was of good family and a Cambridge man of exceptional ability; at the Lady Margaret's recent foundation of Christ's College he had become familiar with Greek as well as Latin. In 1534 he was still but twenty-eight, though distinguished by both ability and holiness; he had been first vicar (or second in command) and then procurator of the house, while Houghton's choice of him as confessor is a sufficient proof of his maturity and spiritual insight. The impressionable Chauncy, to whom Exmew in his radiant young manhood appeared the beau ideal of a monk, has recorded several personal details of him, and in particular of his selfreproach as he, the procurator, left the night-choirs early, likening himself 1 Historia, 76: 'Prior crebrius dicere solebat sese Angelos sub sua obedientia habere/ 2 Ibid. 69. 3 Ibid. 70.

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to Judas who was unworthy to hear the last words of his Master.1 More valuable still, perhaps, is the evidence of a manuscript that Exmew knew well, and nourished his spirit on, The Cloud of Unknowing, which he caused Chauncy to copy.2 Yet a third, like Exmew still young, has left a mark on the records of the time.3 Sebastian Newdigate, bearer of a name which since his day has more than once left a notable impress on English life, sprang of a family settled at Harefield in Middlesex and later also at Arbury in Warwickshire.4 Through his mother, Dame Amphylis Nevill, he was related to the county families of Lincolnshire; an elder sister Jane, who married Sir Robert Dormer, was ancestress of a family ever to be distinguished among the English Catholics; another sister, mother of the recusant Lady Stonor, stood at the head of a long line faithful to the old allegiance; two brothers were knights of Malta and two other sisters became nuns in the observant convents of Syon and Dartford.5 The young Sebastian, tall, handsome, gallant and with great charm of manner, had gone to court as a page, where he attracted the notice of the king and became a gentleman of the Privy Chamber. When the royal divorce was first mooted his sister, Lady Dormer, summoned him to visit her and warned him of the danger of the king's example. The young courtier at first defended his master, but finally promised that if his sister's judgment proved correct, he would remember her advice. * Remember it and act upon it', she retorted. 'I shall', he said. 'I fear for you', she replied. He paused, leaning his head upon his hand, and then asked what she would think if she heard that he had become a Carthusian monk. 'A monk', rejoined his affectionate sister, 'I fear, rather, I shall see thee hanged.' A few months later, Newdigate was in the Charterhouse, though Lady Dormer would not be 1 Ibid. 77—8. Chauncy describes Exmew (p. 77) as 'primo Vicarius, postea Procurator' and later (p. 107) as'remotus a Vicariatu Procurator factus' while, on the same page, Middlemore in 1535 is 'tune Vicarius antea Procurator'. Unless Exmew changed offices twice this would seem to imply that these two monks changed places shortly before the death of Houghton. 2 So Sir H. Chauncy in his Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire (1700), 58. 3 Most of our knowledge is derived from H. Clifford, Life ofJane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, ed. J. Stevenson, S.J. Although this account did not leave its author's hands finally till 1643, it was composed c. 1616 and is a valuable source of information. The writer was for some years, c. 1600—9, a kind of major-domo in the Spanish household of the widowed duchess. This lady, born in 1538, was granddaughter of Jane Newdigate, later Lady Dormer, Sebastian's elder sister, and had been brought up by her grandmother who survived till 1571, her eightieth year. She must often have told the child of her martyred brother only a few years after his death, and on all important family traditions Clifford's record may be accepted, even though on other matters he often repeats uncritically a later Catholic on dit. 4 Sir J. Newdigate (1719—1806) perpetuated his memory by his University prizes, and the holder of the baronetcy during the childhood of Mary Ann Evans figures in George Eliot's first novel under the name of Cheveril. A mid-Victorian Newdigate was distinguished by his antipathy towards Catholicism. 5 Clifford (pp. cit. 39) says that the sister at Syon became abbess; a Maria Newdigate duly appears in a list of nuns at Syon in 1518 (Aungier, History of Syon, 82) but not in any subsequent list, nor in the list of abbesses (ibid. 108).

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persuaded of the authenticity of his conversion till she had called upon Tynbygh herself.1 Chauncy tells us, and those with any experience of observant religious communities will readily believe his words, that the converses fell not a whit short of the choir monks in holiness. He says—and this again is a familiar experience—that many were men of prayer and often surprised the more learned by the spiritual wisdom with which they spoke of what they had heard read in church or refectory. In the event, a number of them proved able to hold their own even more successfully than the choir monks in confessing their faith and in the endurance of prolonged suffering. It was not, however, to be expected that all the inmates of the House of the Salutation would find or follow perfectly their calling, and such a life, lived so purely, imposed a severe strain on those less pure and inevitably provoked psychological or moral reactions among those not of the finest temper. Even some who desired to imitate their leaders followed false, or flickering, lights. It is noteworthy—and again true to the experience of the ages—that those who, like Dom John Darley or Chauncy himself, delighted in the marvellous and the visionary, should have failed when confronted with unlovely reality. Others, in whom neurotic or psychotic tendencies existed, alternated between imaginary terrors and real irregularities in an endeavour to escape from solitude and from themselves. Finally, there were not wanting some who by their irresponsible vagaries or by sheer treachery helped to ruin the house that had sheltered them. Of these the least malicious was perhaps the ingenious, restless Andrew Boorde, who had made profession at a very early age. Temperamentally unsuited to a life of silence and monotony, and perhaps also unfaithful to his vocation as he knew it, he ultimately obtained a dispensation of some kind through the agency of Prior Batmanson, though he lived on at the Charterhouse until he was freed by Cromwell, to set out on his travels for the purpose of studying medicine, which occupied him for the rest of his life. Less amiable than Boorde were such men as Dom George Norton, who became desperate in solitude; Dom Nicholas Rawlings, who entered the Charterhouse after a fault in clerical life, made his profession after a few months when his life was despaired of in illness, and subsequently recovered to lodge a series of unfounded charges against his superior; Darley, the seer of visions, who heard at least one true word from beyond the grave, and who ended as a chaplain at Salisbury; and the discontented and backbiting Dom Thomas Salter.2 To these may be added 1 Clifford, Jane Dormer•, 19-23; cf. also 37: *This gentleman, as he hath been described to me, was somewhat tall of stature, his body well proportioned and comely. . .he had a great courage.' Chauncy, Historia, 108, vouches for his education at court: 'fuerat nutritus in domo domini Regis'. 2 For all this, v. Chauncy's eighth chapter De fratribus reprobis, and the accounts and letters in Thompson, English Carthusians. The ghost of old Dom Raby appeared to Darley, and spoke of the martyrdom of Fisher and Houghton. When Darley asked him ' ffather, what elles?' he replied 'the angelles of pease ded lament and murne withowt mesur'; and so vanished away (Wright, SL, xn).

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the anonymous renegade who provided Cromwell with a series of charges against the statutes of the order, intended to show that their austerity and withdrawal from the world was unnatural and anti-Christian.1 Such acts of treachery, however, and all thought of revolution, lay in the womb of time when Houghton began his rule, and the young community of the House of the Salutation asked only to be allowed to go its way forgotten of the world. They were, however, too near the centre of things to escape all contacts with the life of men unblest. Many were aware that Newdigate, and perhaps others also, had sought there a refuge from the iniquity of the times; thither turned the thoughts of Sir John Gage, vice-chamberlain of the court, when he felt that he could no longer serve the king,2 and thither, we may suppose, came many for counsel and strength when the divorce and its sequels began to cause much searching of hearts, though the London monks were never in any way compromised with the Nun of Kent. The Charterhouse, therefore, though its members evaded rather than courted public notice, was in spite of itself an influence to be reckoned with, for even its enemies acknowledged the holiness of life of the inmates.3 It was an influence that worked invisibly when the course of public affairs was normal, but which could not be ignored when the government was making excursions into the spiritual realm, and claiming control of consciences or of beliefs. The Carthusians, in common with all other subjects of the king, were required in the spring of 1534 to swear to the first Act of Succession, and by so doing to acquiesce in the annulling of Henry's first marriage and in the legitimization of Anne Boleyn's offspring. Their sympathies had unquestionably lain with Queen Katharine, and they were personally persuaded of the validity of her marriage; when the commissioners first arrived on 4 May to tender the oath Houghton replied in the name of all that what the king might do was no business of Carthusians; they asked only to be left in their peace. When urged to assemble the community to swear he replied that he could not see how such a long-standing marriage could be declared invalid. He was therefore conveyed to the Tower along with the procurator Humphrey Middlemore. There they were visited by Edward Lee, archbishop of York, and others, and persuaded that the faith was not at stake; it is possible that they never saw the preamble to the Act, with its implicit repudiation of papal authority, which formed the obstacle in the way of More and Fisher; in any case they agreed to take the oath, 1 This, and the letters of these unsatisfactory inmates of the Charterhouse, supply ample evidence of the rigour of the life and the high level of discipline. See in particular the complaints referred to in the text (Z.P, vn, 1047, and Thompson, English Carthusians, 390—2) and Andrew Boorde's inability to abide the 'rugorosyte' of the observance (LP, ix, 12).

2 LP, vii (1534), 14. 3 E.g. Bedyll to Cromwell, 28 August 1534: 'If it were not for the opinion whiche men had and some yet have, in thair apparent holinesse, which is, and was, for the moost part covert hypocrysy, it made no greate mater what became of thaim so thair soules were saved* (ZP, VII, 1090).

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so far as it might be lawful, and were sent home. They had, however, gone too fast for the community, most of whom were still for refusing to swear. When the commissioners returned to administer the oath, they apparently obtained no adhesions; at a second visit, Houghton and half a dozen swore, and it was only at a third visit, at the prior's instant wish and surrounded by men-at-arms, that all took the oath. So far as can be seen, their opposition rested on a strong disapproval of the king's action rather than on a clear sight of the ultimate principles involved; when they swore, therefore, it was without doing utter violence to their consciences in a matter of faith.1 Houghton's expressed forebodings that they would not long be left in peace were speedily realized. In the same session of parliament the Treason Act was passed, which extended the definition of that crime to include treason by word, and specifically such speech as might * maliciously* deprive the king of any of his 'dignities or titles'. Under this act, which came into force on 1 February 1535, a charge of high treason could be brought against anyone who denied, or who even refused to acknowledge, that the king was Supreme Head on earth of the Church in England. No oath was attached to the act, but in the spring of 1535 commissioners were appointed to require acknowledgement of the king's headship of the Church, and this was usually obtained by administering an oath upon the gospels in general terms of acceptance of the king's headship. All religious houses were visited for this purpose in due course. When it was clear that they would not be ignored the Carthusians realized that the day of trial had come. Houghton's chief anxiety was for the many young members of his community whose vocations he had doubtless fostered and whose professions he had received. He feared for their perseverance if the house were suppressed, and he even considered the possibility of outward compliance, with words of reservation, in order to save his monastery if he alone could swear for all.2 Meanwhile, he set aside three days of preparation for the trial: on the first, all made a general confession; on the second all, led by Houghton himself, asked pardon of each of his brethren in turn for all offences; on the third, the prior sang a Mass of the Holy Spirit for guidance. When he did so, and the moment came for the elevation of the consecrated Host, all felt in their hearts, and 1 There is no doubt that the Carthusians took the Oath of Succession. Certificates of Bishop Rowland Lee are extant stating that he has received oaths and fealties at the Charterhouse on 29 May from Houghton and five others, and on 6 June from the bulk of the community (Z.P, VII, 728). The suggestion of Dom Hendriks {The London Charterhouse, 125) that a special form of oath was allowed has nothing to commend it. 2 Such at least is the probable meaning of the ambiguous sentence in Historiay 93: 'Si solummodo pro meo consensu negotium fuerit, exponam me misericordiae Dei, et ero anathema pro his fratribus meis minimis, ac consentiam regiae voluntati, si licite fieri possit, ut praeservem istos a tot et tantis periculis futuris.' We cannot be sure that Chauncy preserved the exact words of Houghton; in any case, he omitted them from the corresponding passage of the Passio Minor of 1564, probably because he considered his readers would be scandalized.

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to some it seemed that they heard, either as a gust of wind or as an echo of harmony, a breath of the Spirit Whose counsel they had implored. The celebrant was for some minutes unable to continue the Mass, and at the subsequent chapter he spoke of his experience thankfully indeed, but with an exhortation that all should abide in God's grace with prayer, humble and fearful. His own constant prayer was that of Christ for His disciples: 'Holy Father, keep them whom thou hast given me in thy name.' While Houghton thus awaited the summons he was visited by his fellow priors of Beauvale and Axholme. The former, Robert Laurence, was in origin a monk of London; the latter, Augustine Webster, had professed at Sheen. They decided to forestall the commissioners by seeking an interview with Cromwell in which to ask for exemption from the obligation of the oath. This was refused, and after a series of three interrogations conducted by the vicar-general they were lodged for their pains in the Tower, where Fisher and More already lay on the matter of the Oath of Succession, and were examined by some of the Council. Houghton took careful notes of their various examinations, and these, after being read by Fisher, were conveyed to the Charterhouse, where Chauncy saw them.1 Unfortunately, these papers have not survived, but Chauncy's account may be presumed to be essentially trustworthy. According to him, when they expressed willingness to consent 'so far as the law of God might allow', Cromwell roughly brushed aside all qualifications; when they asserted that the Church had always held otherwise, and that St Augustine had set the authority of the Church above that of Scripture, the vicargeneral replied that he cared naught for the Church and that Augustine might hold as he pleased. All he wished to know was whether they would swear a direct oath or no. They then refused absolutely. It seems clear that in taking this decision they were influenced solely by their conviction that a matter of divine faith was at stake. The Carthusian Order, as such, was in no direct dependence upon the papacy, as were the orders of friars, nor did the pope figure in their statutes. Nor had Houghton and his companions any concern with the unity of Christian nations, whatever may have been the case with More. All that Chauncy says, and all that can be extracted from the fragments of Houghton's notes and record sources, goes to show that the Carthusian priors and their followers, many of them men of education and wide reading, stood purely and simply by the traditional faith of the Church in the divine commission to Peter. They were thus in the most literal sense martyrs of the faith.2 They were in due course tried in Westminster Hall on 28-29 April, and 1 Historia, 106: ' Omnia interrogata et responsa sua in hoc negotio scripsit propria manu in pugillari; quern misit ad Patrem Guillelmum Exmew. . . qui mihi misero dedit.' Exmew, before his own arrest, compiled an account of Houghton's trial and death to be sent to the Grande Chartreuse. Chauncy, in his turn, gave the notes to a Spaniard to take to Rome, and it is possible that the account printed in L.P, vni, 661 from an Italian source is taken from them. 2 See Appendix m, infra, p. 471.

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an unwilling jury was browbeaten by Cromwell into pronouncing the verdict of guilty.1 After their condemnation Cranmer made one of his characteristically cautious attempts to save their lives at the expense of their convictions, but his offer to argue with them was not acceptable to Cromwell. As they left the Tower for Tyburn on a May morning (Tuesday, 4 May) they did not know that they were watched by one who had long known them and wished them well. With his customary humility More, who was standing with his daughter by a window, attributed their early release from this world's prison to the long years of penance they had spent while he had lived at ease, and he called the attention of his Margaret to their joyful alacrity, as of men going to their marriage. By the royal command they were executed in their monastic habits, with the hair shirts of their Rule beneath. Each at the foot of the gallows was offered pardon if he would submit, and on their refusal the barbarous sentence was carried out with every circumstance of cruelty. Houghton, the first to die, embraced his executioner and addressed the vast crowd, taking them to witness against the day of judgment that he died rather than deny the teaching of God's Church. He bore the agony of the butchery, aggravated by the tough hair shirt, with what seemed a more than human patience; conscious to the end, he died invoking the Lord he had loved and followed to the Cross. He was forty-eight years of age.2 When the prior had been taken to the Tower the government of the House of the Salutation fell to the vicar, Humphrey Middlemore, who acted in all things with the counsel of the procurator, William Exmew, and of Sebastian Newdigate. On the very day of the execution Cromwell sent his 'owne Thomas Bedyll' to the Charterhouse, furnished with copious anti-papal literature. The three seniors, at his request, spent the rest of the day perusing the books, but found nothing in them to alter their convictions. Bedyll, meanwhile, had been taken sick, but he summoned the Carthusians to his bedside and warned them of the dangers of hypocrisy and vainglory, not to speak of the direct action of the lying spirit who had deceived the prophets of Achab.3 Still unconvinced, the three monks were removed to die Marshalsea, where they remained for a fortnight chained by the neck and legs to posts without the possibility of moving or the relief of a minute's freedom. Here, according to a tradition which may be reliable, Newdigate, the ex-courtier, received a visit from his old master, 1 There seems no reason to doubt that threats were used, though Froude endeavoured to disprove it. Chauncy asserts (Historia, 101) that this was so, as does an anonymous contemporary (BM. Arundel MS. 153, fo. 308, cited Thompson, English Carthusians, 397), and in a letter written to Lord Lisle two days before the trial (27 April) John Husse relates that Cromwell has had much trouble with the judges and sergeants about the case (LPy

VIII, 606).

2 LPt xiv, 200. Pole, Apologia ad Carolum Quintum, 98—9. The details of the execution probably reached Chauncy from Antonius Rexius, O.P., a friend of Houghton, who was present. 3 MS. Cleopatra, E. VI, fo. 259 (Thompson, English Carthusians, 404—5).

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who made a last attempt to win his submission by alternate blandishments and threats.1 But neither fair words nor the frown of the instant tyrant could shake the Carthusian, and in due course this second trio were examined by the Council and ( n June) tried at Westminster. Gallant, high-spirited young men as they were, unbroken by their long ordeal of pain, they adhered steadfastly to their refusal and put forth their reasons with energy and ability.2 A week later (19 June), like the three priors, they went to their death as to a feast, with eagerness and joy.3 The plight of the London Charterhouse, thus deprived by public execution of its spiritual and administrative superiors, may readily be imagined. Those that were left were called upon to follow a most exacting Rule without the confidence that comes from submission to those with canonical and personal claims to obedience, and they were exposed to all the assaults upon the citadel of the soul that are delivered by the waves of doubt and despondency that swell and eddy in times of stress within the walls of an enclosed community. Above their gateway the severed arm of their late prior provided a text for visitors. They were, in addition, subjected to every form of vexation and petty persecution. Two servants of Cromwell, John Whalley and Jasper Fyloll, were put in, the one to undertake the duties of procurator, the other to use all his endeavours to convert the monks. The former underfed the community by progressive stages, while he himself and his cronies lived in plenty and wasted the revenues;4 the latter, in addition to his own arguments, let loose upon the brethren a series of visitors and conferenciers of the new way of thinking. When one of these had been received with ridicule, Whalley forwarded to the vicargeneral a proposed course of treatment which, were the issue not so fateful, would appear ludicrous in its ponderous futility. A series of discourses by 'honest learned men* was to be followed by public sermons against the pope, ending in a crescendo of exhortations by the bishops of York, Winchester, Durham, Lincoln, Bath and London. If these charmers failed, the monks were to be called before the priors of all the Charterhouses of England and the temporal and spiritual peers of the realm. ' No 1 Clifford, Jane Dormer, 27—32. This tradition, reaching Clifford from Lady Dormer (Jane Newdigate) through a single intermediary, her granddaughter Jane Dormer, may be accepted in its main lines. Clifford asserts that Henry interviewed Newdigate both in prison and in the Tower, and recounts long speeches which are certainly not the ipsissima verba of the parties. 2 Historia, 108: 'Audacter allegantes de Scripturis Sanctis ante tribunal Judicum.' 3 Ibid.: 'Iveruntque ad mortem quasi ad epulas. . .alacritate corporis et hilaritate vultus.' 4 The monks also received the attentions of Bedyll and others. The statement in the text is from Chauncy, Historia, 109; Miss Thompson prints the relevant letters from the pair. According to Fyloll the expenses of the Charterhouse in food alone exceeded the clear regular annual revenue, which according to the VE was £642. This is scarcely credible, even taking into consideration the recent steep rise in prices, the high cost of fish at all times, and the falling-off of gifts to the monks. Either the converses purposely confused Fyloll or he gave false figures.

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question of it', the writer adds, 'they be exceedingly superstitious, ceremonious and pharisaicall, and wonderly addicted to their old Mumpsimus.'1 In the sequel they were deprived of their books, even of the statutes of their institute, the house was put under a brutal and inquisitorial * order', and their privacy was invaded by hostile or curious visitors who badgered and even struck the monks.2 Members of the Council and others harangued and argued in the chapterhouse so as to disorganize the horarium, and the few brethren who were discontented or malevolent were encouraged to communicate their grievances and suspicions to Cromwell, and to receive from him dispensations from any points of discipline they might find hard. Their friends failed them, and the Bridgettines of Syon, who had formerly encouraged their resistance, now wrote urging that submission was reasonable and meritorious.3 If anything were yet lacking to the bitterness of the cup which they were daily required to drink, in surroundings where every corner spoke of the past and all that they held precious was blown upon and ridiculed, they were permitted to find it in a message addressed to them by the head of their order, the prior of the Grande Chartreuse. Their late confrater, Andrew Boorde, in the course of his long continental tour of medical academies, visited the Chartreuse to make enquiries about the dispensation he had received, and apparently felt called upon to suggest to the authorities there that the London house was making unnecessary trouble to the government and king, and would be the better for a rebuke. Dom Jean Gaillard accordingly, in August 1535, asked Boorde to convey his wishes to London; he also wrote to the bishop of Lichfleld, Rowland Lee, in the same sense. The erring brethren, he said, were not to fail in obedience to the Defender of the Faith, lest they might be deprived of his kindly interest in these troublous times. They were also to pay more attention than they had hitherto done to the punctual observance and transmission of obits. As a further measure to assuage any soreness of feeling that might exist, and to ensure harmonious co-operation from all parties in the future, the prior of the Grande Chartreuse admitted Cromwell and the bishop to full confraternity of the order, and instructed his sons to do nothing without their counsel.4 1 Whalley to Cromwell, printed by Thompson, English Carthusians, 415—16. Mumpsimus and its variant Sumpsimus were cant terms current among those of the new way of thinking in religion, denoting a superstitious ceremony (cf. 'hocus-pocus'). Both were used by Henry VIII in his well-known last charge to the Parliament of 1545. 2. Historia, 109: 'Qui illuderent et colaphis caederent nos.' 3 The English Carthusians, 434—5. The letter, from B.M. MS. Cott. Cleopatra, E VI, fo. 172-4, is printed in full by Aungier, History of Syon, 430-3. 4 Boorde's letter (LP, ix, 11) is in English Carthusians, 413-14. The letter of the prior to Rowland Lee is in LP, ix, 8. It is badly mutilated but some phrases are clear, e.g. ' continua oratione... ad Deum pro ipso serenissimo rege, Fidei Christianae Defensore... filii nostri errantes inter haec tempora nubila, clementissima. . .facie privemur', etc. Boorde's letter should be pondered by those who sympathize with the indulgent treatment accorded him by some historians, e.g. in the DNB.

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The oppression of the Charterhouse lasted for two years. There is evidence that the king would have made short work of the opposition had it not been that Cromwell, presumably for reasons of policy, was unwilling to outrage public sentiment with the spectacle of the sudden and complete destruction of a community so highly esteemed, and therefore delayed long to accomplish the royal wishes.1 After all other devices had failed, the tactic of division was attempted. On 4 May 1536, four of those accounted most stubborn were sent to other houses; Chauncy and one Fox to Beauvale; John Rochester and James Walworth to Hull.2 A little later eight more were sent for a time to the Bridgettines at Syon, where they were like to find learned men who, having argued themselves into support of the king's position, would be doubly anxious to persuade others. The Bridgettines did their best, but their success was not great.3 Hitherto, the unanimity of the brethren, or at least of the respectable majority, had helped to protect them, as Tynbygh had long ago foretold. At last, however, the king became more instant, and a little later, in May 1537, a division was at last effected in the sorely tried family. The Council threatened to suppress the house out of hand, and a number of the monks, exhausted by the persecution and hoping to save their monastery, agreed to renounce the authority of the pope and to accept that of the king as supreme head; this they swore to so far as words went though, if we may believe Chauncy who was ultimately one of their number, their hearts and consciences always gave the lie to their lips.4 It was not, however, thus with all. Ten remained, * unmoved, unshaken, unseduced, unterrified \ who would not swear; three were priests, one a deacon, and six were converses. They were immediately lodged in a filthy ward of Newgate; it was the Friday before Whitsunday, 18 May. The first martyrs had been executed as a public spectacle. The publicity had not told against them, and the second group had been despatched without advertisement. The third and most numerous band was denied even the dignity of a formal trial and execution. They had asked to live as hidden servants of Christ; they died, silent witnesses to His words, hidden from the eyes of all. Chained without possibility of movement in a foul atmosphere, and systematically starved, they were thus left, as Bedyll put it, to 'be dispeched by thand of God'.5 Abandoned by all, and dying slowly of hunger and fever, they received a moiety of succour and a more precious instance of love from a devoted woman. Margaret Gigs, the adopted daughter of Sir Thomas More, had learnt from him to practise 1 LP, XII, 501 (27 September 1536). 2 Chauncy does not give the names in his first account; they can be discovered from the account of 1570 (ed. Church Historical Society, 108, 112; B.M. Con. MS. Cleopatra, E. iv, fo. 298), and from the letter (from the same MS. fo. 247) printed in Aungier, Syon, 438—9. 3 Historia, 113-14; Cott. MS. Cleopatra, E. vi, 172-4; E. iv, 247. 4 Historia, 115—16; 'Taedio affecti commiserunt se in periculo misericordiae divinae licet non absque gravi conscientiarum suarum laesione. . . et certissime scio quod revera ita acta sint, sed non in hoc justificati sumus.' 5 Bedyll's letter is printed in English Carthusians, 480-1.

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charity and knew well of her father's admiration for the Carthusians. She now bribed her way to their prison and, acting the part of a milkmaid, carried in a bucket on her head food, which she placed with her own hands between their lips. Besides food, she brought also clean linen which she put on them, and cleansed them as they stood unable to move hand or foot. The effects of her ministration betrayed her; the authorities, finding the prisoners still alive, reprimanded the gaoler and Mistress Clement (as she now was) was denied entrance. Undeterred, she obtained access to the roof and endeavoured, by removing some tiles, to let food down in a basket.1 She failed in her design, and the Carthusians died one by one through the summer months; the last to die in chains was Thomas Johnson on 20 September, but a converse, William Home, was for some reason removed to a more tolerable durance and lived on in prison till he was drawn to Tyburn to suffer as his prior had done on 4 August 1540. 'And so this child, tried longer and more severely than any other, followed his father, and died for the love of Jesus, and for the faith of His bride the Catholic Church',2 thus completing the tale of eighteen martyrs, for two of those exiled from London had been hanged at York in 1537. Rarely indeed in the annals of the Church have any confessors of the faith endured trials longer, more varied or more bitter than these unknown monks. They had left the world, as they hoped, for good; but the children of the world, to gain their private ends, had violated their solitude to demand of them an approval and a submission which they could not give. They had long made of their austere and exacting Rule a means to the loving and joyful service of God; pain and desolation, therefore, when they came, held no terrors for them. When bishops and theologians paltered or denied, they were not ashamed to confess the Son of Man. They died faithful witnesses to the Catholic teaching that Christ had built His Church upon a rock. Those who had taken the oath to save their house were quickly to find, as More had put it a few years before, that, once deflowered, they would soon be devoured. Within three weeks after the last arrests the surrender 1 The authority for this is the Life of Mother Margaret Clement preserved in two MSS. of the English Austin Canonesses now at Haywards Heath and Newton Abbot. The relevant passage, together with much information about the Clements, is given by C. S. Durrant in A Link between the Flemish Mystics and the English Martyrs, 183. The author of this Life, Sister Shirley of the convent of English nuns at Bruges, did not complete her work till 1611, but, as with Clifford's information about Sebastian Newdigate, what she says has excellent credentials and may be in gross accepted. She was for years the intimate assistant of Mother M. Clement, who was herself a daughter of Margaret Clement {nee Gigs). As the mother (like Jane Newdigate, Lady Dormer) lived to an advanced age, dying in exile at Bruges in 1570, substantial error, in view of the good faith of the parties, is not possible. The incident in the text may therefore be accepted as historical. It receives confirmation from another incident recorded by Sister Shirley. When Margaret Clement (the elder) lay dying, but in complete possession of her faculties, she repeatedly told those with her that she could not stay long, for the fathers of the Charterhouse stood around her bed, calling her to come away with them. 2 Historiay 117: 'Sicque patrem secuta est sua proles, inter omnes diutissime et durissime vexatus, et necatus pro amore Jesu et pro fide sponsae suae Ecclesiae Catholicae, potius quam falsum dicere aut jurare voluisset.'

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of the monastery had been demanded and obtained. It was still more than a year before the remnant of the community was expelled; in the interval Chauncy and a companion, who had been removed to Beauvale and Syon to shake their constancy, were induced to take the oath, still hoping to save their house.1 The hope was empty: the House of the Salutation was suppressed on 15 November 1538; the church and buildings, desecrated and forlorn, were used as a store for the king's pavilions and arms; the altars were found convenient as gaming-tables by the workmen.2 The conduct of the other Carthusian priories was less heroic than might perhaps have been expected from a body living such a strict life.3 None of them had had a Houghton to train them to war. As will be noted on another page, those that were legally liable to suppression under the Act of 1536 as lesser houses had in fact been spared, so that seven remained in 1538-9, when the drive to liquidate what remained of monastic capital began. Sheen, the richest of all and of considerable repute, the near neighbour of the Bridgettines of Syon, and distinguished by the residence of Dean Colet and Reginald Pole, put up little opposition. As will be remembered, Henry Man, Henry Ball the vicar, John Mitchell the procurator, and William Howe the sacrist had been among the most enthusiastic and perhaps unthinking of the supporters of the Maid of Kent. When the debacle took place in the autumn of 1535 they disowned her memory with equal alacrity. Cromwell realized that they would give no further trouble and saw to it that two of them were appointed to higher office. Man was sent first to Witham, and when after a few months he was recalled to be prior of Sheen, Mitchell took his place in the west; the two were appointed visitors of the province by the vicar-general. When therefore Rowland Lee and Bedyll came on 7 May 1534, to sound the community on their attitude to the Act of Succession, Man did his best to forward their mission, and the commissioners had nothing but praise for their compliance. Next year, however, when the issue of principle was plain and their London confreres had given them a lead, the community of Sheen was not so unanimous. While Man, the prior, was compliant to the point of obsequiousness, the vicar, Henry Ball, and several others were unwilling to admit the supremacy. They begged for permission to remain silent, or for time to change their minds, and whatever the upshot of their letters to Cromwell and others, there were in the sequel no martyrs from Sheen. As previously in the affair of Elizabeth Barton,we catch glimpses of an ineffectual piety which wished, but dared not, to make a stand, and which was thwarted by the treachery of a discontented element which was so common and so lamentable a feature of Tudor monastic life. Witham, the cradle of the province, showed no trace of the spirit of 1 Historiay 119. ' Spei quidem frustratae innixi vanisque persuasionibus et promissionibus illecti, abstracti et seducti.' 2 Ibid.: ' Super altaria sancta saltantes choreis luserunt et aleis.' 3 For what follows, details and references will be found in the accounts by Dom Hendriks and Miss Thompson {English Carthusians and Somerset Carthusians).

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St Hugh and his redoubtable converse, who had spoken his mind to Henry II. The monks satisfied Layton in 1535 and surrendered easily enough in 1539. At Hinton, Prior Horde, a monk of London who had a high reputation in the order, was in earlier days unfavourable to the divorce, and on the subject of the royal supremacy and surrender of his house was divided in mind and will to the last, but his brother Alan, a bencher of the Inner Temple, represented to him the dangers of resistance, and he gave way.1 In his resistance to surrender he was upheld by a majority of his community including one Nicholas Balland, who openly denied the king's supremacy, asserting that of the pope. His friends endeavoured with success to rescue him from the consequences of such opinions by representing him as suffering from bouts of lunacy, and in the event he signed the surrender with the rest. There was, however, method in his madness, for sixteen years later he was one of Chauncy's companions in the revived Charterhouse, and he lived for more than twenty years in religion, dying at Louvain in 1578. Of the rest Axholme, having lost its martyred prior, a monk of Sheen, made an inglorious end in an atmosphere of intrigue. At Beauvale, when the commissioners arrived on 16 April 1535 and examined the community on the question of the royal supremacy, Trafford the procurator affirmed his belief in papal supremacy, and declared his willingness to abide by this to death. He was in consequence sent up to London to see Cromwell, and arrived there a few days after the execution of his prior, Robert Laurence. There, for whatever reason, his conviction disappeared; he was sent to Sheen, and a year later he was put in charge of the remaining monks at Smithfleld as Cromwell's puppet prior to surrender the house. Bedyll, who found Exmew and Newdigate vain and hypocritical, thought him * a man of suche charite as I have not seen the like \ 2 Cromwell, however, had a long memory, and when it came to allotting pensions Trafford received an annuity of £20 as compared with that of £133 given to the prior of Sheen. Coventry, which had been respited in 1536, gave little trouble at the end, but Hull and Mount Grace were at first disposed to resist; they were won over by the arguments of the archbishop of York. The two London monks however, who had been exiled to Hull, stood firm, and one of them, John Rochester, wrote to the Duke of Norfolk a letter, which deserves more respect than it has received from historians, in which he begged for the opportunity to meet the king face to face and demonstrate to him that the royal supremacy over the Church was * directly against the lawes of God, the fayth cathole, and helth of his hyghnes bodie and Sowle'. Norfolk forwarded the letter to Cromwell, with the remark ' I beleve he is one of the most arrant traytours of all others that I have heard of, and suggested that he should be sent up to London to be 'justified there'. The 1 For Horde, v. also Ellis. OL, 11, 2, cxxx, and LPt xiv, i, 145, 269. 2 Letter in English Carthusians, 481.

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execution of Rochester and his companion, Walworth, took place in the sequel at York, on 11 May, and the Duke reported the event to the king, with the comment that' two more wilful religious men, in manner unlearned, I think, never suffered'.1 The indictment contained no charge but that of denying the royal supremacy.2 Mount Grace, the northernmost house, was second only to London in repute. We saw elsewhere that towards the end of the fifteenth century Richard Methley set down his spiritual experiences in a group of writings which still exist.3 A younger contemporary of Methley, John Norton,4 who entered religion in 1482-3 and became in turn procurator and sixth prior of the house, wrote a series of short tracts on the monastic virtues, on the imitation of Christ and His Passion, and on the Blessed Sacrament, in which he set down the thoughts that had come to him in prayer as the words of the Lord speaking in his heart. His reflections are diffuse and doctrinally commonplace, and there is nothing to indicate specifically mystical experience; he has none of the fire of Rolle or the direct vision of Dame Juliana, but there is no extravagance or ineptitude in what he writes. His pages are indeed a distant reflection of the style that found its highest expression in Denis the Carthusian. He is one more witness to the sincerity and high ideals of his order, of which, like Methley, he is extremely proud, and the admiration felt for his compositions by the distinguished chancellor of York, a Cambridge man of note, William Melton, is still further evidence of the place held by the Carthusians in contemporary opinion. 5 Mount Grace continued to flourish, with a tradition of fervour and a steady intake of notable recruits, till the end.6 When the crisis came there was a painful struggle. Two monks refused to take the oath of Succession in the summer of 1534, but apparently without fatal consequences. When it came to accepting the Supremacy in 1535 there was more hesitation. The prior, John Wilson, was at first set upon refusing, but he took counsel of the two northern bishops, Tunstal of Durham and Edward Lee of. York. Both were men of real learning and conservative temper, but both had, with differing degrees of hesitation, capitulated to the king when it was 1 LP, XII (i), 777-8, 1172 (3). The date is as in Chauncy, Historia, 118. 2 The indictment is in part printed by Thompson, English Carthusians, 466 n. 3 ROf 11, 224-6. 4 Norton occurs as prior 1527—8, 15 31—2 in VCH Yorks^ m, 193. His treatises, Musica Monachorum, Thesaurus Cordium vere Amancium and Devota Lamentacio, are preserved in Lincoln Cathedral MS. A 6. 8. I owe a knowledge of them to Dom Philip Jebb, who kindly lent me a copy of his transcript. 5 Melton (d. 1528) was master of Michaelhouse at Cambridge, and himself the author of a sermon printed by Wynkyn de Worde; cf. art. in DNB by Mary Bateson. 6 Theflourishingstate of Mount Grace can be seen in a letter (?c. 1530) of Prior Wilson in which he writes of building works that are going forward, of a recent recruit, Sir William Maleverey, commissary and official of Bishop Fisher, and of a waiting list of five (including the Benedictine subprior of Burton) for the unfinished cell. The letter from B.M. Add. MS. 48965 was printed along with others by T. C. Skeat in 'Letters from the Reign of Henry VIII.'

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no longer possible to temporize. They were therefore deeply pledged to uphold the royal supremacy and anxious on every count to convert others. With a combination of patristic quotation and appeals to their own example they worked successfully upon Prior Wilson's scruples. Two of the monks, however, tried to evade the issue by a flight to Scotland; they were brought back and lodged in the convent prison. Eventually all accepted the Supremacy, kept themselves carefully out of trouble during the risings of 1536-7, and in due course surrendered the house on 18 December 1539. It may, however, be remarked that Prior Wilson, another monk, and two converses of Mount Grace were among those who joined Chauncy at the Marian revival of Sheen in 1555, and that no other Charterhouse provided him with so many recruits.

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CHAPTER XX

THE ECONOMY OF THE MONASTERIES IN 1535 No account of the monastic world immediately before the Dissolution would be complete without some assessment of the economic background that lay behind the proposals and events of the time. It has often been asserted in the past that financial distress, or inefficient administration, would alone have made some great readjustment necessary. It has been no less often held that the wealth of the monasteries, and their wasteful and luxurious habits, invited and justified confiscation. Many of these opinions were no more than hypotheses, or rested on a few contemporary statements or charges, but until comparatively recently no attempt was made to find a more reliable basis for judgment. Yet, by a piece of singular good fortune comparable to that enjoyed by students of the Norman Conquest, the monastic historian has at his disposal a comprehensive survey of the financial and economic state of the religious houses of England taken on the very eve of the Dissolution. This is contained in the returns of the royal commissioners who in 1535 were given the task of cataloguing the revenues of the Church; the final outcome of their labours is the collection and digest of returns known as the Valor Ecclesiasticus.1 The occasion of the great survey was as follows. It had been the custom since 1306 that the first year's income, known as the first fruits, of episcopal sees, should go to the papal treasury. This had often given rise to complaints and, in the sporadic outbreak of anti-papal feeling in the years immediately following the disappearance of Wolsey, dislike of this tax had found expression in the Convocation of 1532, which petitioned the king for the parliamentary repeal of annates, as the levy on first fruits was called. This manifestation of an anti-papal mood in a very practical context exactly suited the circumstances of the moment in the king's * great matter', and Henry and Cromwell proceeded to exploit the situation with remarkable adroitness. A bill was passed through Parliament restraining the payment of annates, but allowing the king to compound with the pope for their transformation into a charge of not more than 5 per cent on the net income of a see; assent to the bill was suspended at the king's pleasure, thus providing Henry with a bargaining counter in his negotiations with the pope. When the final break with Rome occurred in 1534 the bill 1 The Valor Ecclesiasticus was printed by the Record Commission in six folio volumes, 1810-34, edited by J. Caley and J. Hunter, the latter of whom contributed a valuable introduction. The only critical and tolerably comprehensive study of the data provided by the Valor is that of Professor A. Savine, being the first part of vol. I of the Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, edited by Sir P. Vinogradoff (1909). Savine's work will be discussed on a later page.

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became law, but within a few months another bill went through parliament securing the first fruits of all spiritual benefices and offices to the Crown, and furthermore imposing a new annual tax of 10 per cent on the net incomes of all spiritual benefices, to take effect from i January 1535.1 Annates thus reappeared in an amplified form, with the addition of a heavy annual tax on the net income of the Church. Before a levy of the latter tax could become practicable a survey of all ecclesiastical incomes was essential. Accordingly the chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley, was empowered to send inquisitors into every diocese to ascertain the value of all ecclesiastical benefices. For this purpose commissions were set up on 30 January 1535 for each shire, before which all clergy and officials were bound to appear with full information, to be given on oath; the returns were to be completed by the first Sunday after Trinity (30 May) in the same year. Detailed instructions were provided as to the taking of evidence and the inspection of registers and account books. Here we are concerned only with the religious houses; the commissioners were instructed to compile a list of all such, specifying their manors, farms, rents and other temporal revenues, together with the names of all rectories, vicarages, tithes, oblations and other spiritual revenues owned by the religious. The final issue of all this was to be a statement of the exact annual amount coming in from every separate source of revenue, the total of which was to represent the gross annual income of the house. From this the commissioners were to deduct, as tax-free, any pensions, rents and alms for the payment of which the house lay under testamentary or other legal obligations, together with all fees due annually to the lay administrators, such as receivers, bailiffs, auditors and stewards, as also (in the case of spiritual revenue) fees due for synodals and proxies. Together, these two kinds of allowance amounted to some 5 per cent+3 per cent of the total income. After the local returns had been assembled, a book for every diocese was to be compiled and returned to London, as has been said, by the first Sunday after Trinity. The chancellor chose as his commissioners and sub-commissioners men of the classes that had for long been used as agents of the government: bishops, mayors, sheriffs, justices of the peace, official auditors and local gentry. A feature of the lists was the predominance of the lay element; the only clerical member of each commission was the bishop, and, although he was usually chairman and conducted negotiations with the government, the total absence of representation on the commissions of the great class which alone was the victim of the new taxation is noteworthy, and significant of the 'new look' which had come in with Cromwell. It is eloquent proof alike of the technical excellence of the administrative organization, of the high level of efficiency among the local 'unprofessional' agents, and of the drive imparted to the whole corps by the vicar-general, that such a widespread and detailed enquiry should have been scheduled for completion x Statutes of the Realm (26 Henry VIII, c. 3), in, 493—9.

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within five months, two of which were bad for travelling, and should in fact have been achieved within a little more than nine. Naturally, in such a vast undertaking, executed so speedily, omissions and inconsistencies were to be expected; the Valor, like Domesday, often needs and sometimes baffles exegesis; but on the whole, with the latter document as with the former, admiration rather than criticism is the reader's first reaction. The commissioners, as laymen and agents of the government, are not to be suspected of laxity or favouritism towards the religious; they were unpaid, and their hopes of future reward or recognition could best be served by a zeal displayed in the exact and inflexible performance of their instructions.1 On the other hand, they were not as a class prejudiced against the religious, to whom many of them were linked by relationships of tenancy or official service, while in many cases, as descendants of founders, patrons or benefactors, they were on easy terms with the monasteries, in whose churches their ancestors were buried and in whose cloisters, in not a few cases, their sons and daughters had taken the habit or received their education. As for the monks, they, like the rest of the great body of churchmen, probably took the enquiry as but one more of the many impositions they had endured at the hands of Wolsey and his successor for a quarter of a century. Some, indeed, may have felt that the red light was now showing so plainly that it was scarcely realistic to haggle about taxation when their very existence was threatened. The final lists, duly digested, were in the hands of the exchequer officials early in 1536. The greater part of them still exists, and is preserved at the Public Record Office in twenty-two volumes and three portfolios. Eighteen of the volumes contain the commissioners' returns for England and Wales, another contains Irish information, and the remaining three form the official digest of the returns; the portfolios contain part of the survey as it came in from the various shires. The commissioners' returns are in fact not complete: six counties (Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Northumberland and Rutland) and parts of two others (Middlesex and Yorkshire) are missing, but the monastic statistics of these can be supplied from the exchequer digest. Of the eighteen volumes mentioned above two are known officially as the Liber Regis; they contain copies of the commissioners' returns, written carefully on vellum with painted miniatures, and tradition has it that they were made in duplicate for the king by a monk of Westminster, where the abbot,William Benson, was a king's man.2 1 Savine, 5-13, where the correspondence that passed between the commissioners and the government, as summarized in LP, is discussed. There are several instance s of that effusive zeal combined with self-commendation that is a familiar characteristic of Cromwell's correspondents. 2 Some of the entries were apparently made by the monks on behalf of the commission, as, for example, at Eynsham, where the facts and figures are in a clear and handsome script. The figures and tables of the Valor can be controlled in certain cases by surveys and extents made by individual houses earlier in the century (e.g. those of Whalley and Glastonbury;

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The Valor has a number of limitations as an instrument of research. Besides the omissions and mistakes inevitable in a hasty compilation of such magnitude, three large monasteries (the Cistercian Kingswood and Kirkstall and the Augustinian Bristol) and two small (Holy Trinity and St Andrew's, both at York) are missing.1 Furthermore, the only total of income available for all the thirty-nine counties of England is that of the net or taxable revenue, that is, the total income less the allowable expenses. The gross income can be ascertained in twenty-three of the counties, but only in the case of twelve is it possible to recover the gross and net income from both temporal and spiritual sources.2 To provide an estimate of the totals that are wanting it is necessary to supply averagefiguresconstructed to show the same proportional relationships as are shown by the totals that exist. There remains the further question as to the general accuracy of the sums and valuations given by the commissioners. It would obviously be unreasonable to expect that numerous groups of men, bound to each other by no ties of association, training or professional code, and working under pressure of time, would produce exactly the same details and totals as another set of men on another occasion. Moreover, fidelity to fact was undoubtedly lessened by the tension inevitably present in every age and in every class of society between the fiscal agents of government and the taxpayers who are undergoing assessment. Nevertheless, there seems to be no reason to suppose that the commissioners would do more than give the benefit of the doubt to the treasury whenever possible, and that this would be offset by the conservative estimates handed in by the religious. That this was the current opinion at the time can be seen from the action of the officials at the centre who, in going through the lists, docked the monks of many of the allowances that had been claimed. In point of fact, if we doubt the veracity of the Valor there are documents to hand for controlling its figures. In a few instances, two independent returns are given in the Valor itself, either because the exchequer itself required or received them, or because dependencies of a house situated in a different county were surveyed by two commissions.3 cf. Savine, 47, 57), and those made after the Valor by the agents of the government, such as the Northern Surveys of 1536—9, the Exchequer or 'Paper* Surveys of about the same time, the Suppression or Receivers* Accounts of 1536-40, and the detailed Pollard-Moyle survey of Glastonbury. For this last, v. Monasticon, 1, 10—21; for the others also, Savine, 42—70. 1 Savine, 32; but he does not notice the omission of Kirkstall, which does not appear either in his text, lists or index. Its net income was £336. Kingswood was in fact twice valued in documents not printed in the VE; v. art. 'Kingswood Abbey' by E. S. Lindley. Its net income was £239 or £244. 2 V. tables in Savine, 98-9. 3 The double returns for Oxfordshire, Bruerne and Burton-on-Trent are discussed by Savine, 34—41. He did not suspect fraud in the case of Burton but Hibbert, Dissolution of the Monasteries, 72-91, seems to have established this. The only other instance noted of serious fraud was at St Mary's, Winchester, where the figure in the Valor was admitted to the commissioners of 1536 as having been too little by no less a sum than £150. As this piece of deceit had the unforeseen effect of putting the nunnery into the class of smaller houses liable to be suppressed in 1536 it was from the governmental point of view a happy fault, and went unpunished.

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Furthermore, a year after the completion of the Valor all religious houses with an income not exceeding £200 were liable to be suppressed, and special commissions were sent to make another survey, this time including a detailed survey of the demesne.1 Of a similar character, but still more elaborate, is the survey taken immediately after the dissolution of Glastonbury by Pollard and Moyle, two of Cromwell's agents.2 Then, a little later, come the Exchequer Surveys of the demesne (the so-called Paper Surveys), and the receivers' accounts of moneys paid into the Augmentations Office after the suppression of the monasteries. Finally, in a few cases terriers or surveys made by individual houses shortly before the Dissolution still exist.3 From all these sources it is possible to estimate the general worth of the figures of the Valor. On the whole, these additional materials confirm the substantial accuracy of the great survey. There are, however, two exceptions of some importance, the one regional, the other common to all the commissioners' work. There seems little doubt that the income of the northern houses—those in the ecclesiastical province of York, together with some in other parts of the country, notably Staffordshire—is on the average rated so much lower in the Valor than in other documents that a serious undervaluation is to be suspected. In the north this might be attributed to the difficulties inherent in the task of a small commission working in a wide and wild region, or to a certain partiality towards the monks on the part of the gentry and others who only eighteen months later were to be the leaders in the Pilgrimage of Graced No circumstantial or regional explanation, however, will account for the consistent undervaluation of monastic demesne held in hand, and of monastic woodland in general. Here, the figures of the Valor were largely conjectural, as the property had never been fully exploited for cash, and the owners, when valuing for tax, would inevitably suggest a conservative figure. For the woods, indeed, the Valor commissioners appear to have worked on different principles in different districts, and not infrequently omitted many, or all, of the woods, or concealed them in other sources of income. The later surveyors, on the other hand, appear occasionally to have estimated what we should now call their capital value, viz. the value of the whole wood if sold at maturity, whereas their value as income could have been, and often was, estimated roughly by discovering the average area yearly ripe for felling; sometimes, however, they adopted a third method, that of giving an estimate of the value of the timber if felled immediately for sale. On the whole, therefore, taken by and large, the Valor underestimates the monastic income (or rather the potential income of the monastic estates) by a percentage which is certainly as large as fifteen for the whole country, and which for some districts may be as large as twenty, or even forty. In many ways such an undervaluation was inevitable in a decade when all prices were rapidly rising, and when rents had not caught up 1 Savine, 42-7, and infra, ch. xxiv. 3 Ibid. 42-49, 57.

2 Savine, 49-59. 4 Mid. 46-9.

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with the increase. A valuation subsequently made, with a view to the realization of the property by keen exploitation or by sale on the open market, would naturally advance both prices and rents, especially when the demesne, hitherto estimated at its yield in produce, was now being set out to lease or rent for the first time. Thus far we have been considering the data provided by the Valor and the accuracy of the figures given by the commissioners within their terms of reference as understood by them. But it must be remembered that several types of asset escaped their attention altogether, as not falling within their definition of revenue. These were, speaking generally, what would now be called fixed assets and current assets. The former, comprising the buildings, furnishings and equipment of the monastery were inevitably (and rightly) left out of the reckoning, though they were in the sequel to be realized so soon. The treasure of the house was also left out. Most of this might indeed be considered as part of the furniture of the place, and in part as sacred and inalienable, but a part, especially at the larger houses, was the nearest to liquid or free capital of anything the monks possessed, for there is no doubt that not only gifts but also surplus income was in the fifteenth century * banked* by conversion into plate or jewellery. It was, nevertheless, dead as regards productive power. In addition, however, there were several classes of current asset. The commissioners, unlike the accounts for a wardship, took no notice of standing crops and only occasional notice of livestock, and made little or no mention of the stores of all kinds, such as grain and hay, which must at all houses have represented what was in fact a return in kind for cash expended. Nor is there any mention of surplus cash in hand, which in some monasteries stood at a considerable figure, even when a balance had been struck between credits and outstanding debts. It is true that in the practice of the age all this was sterile, that is, it produced no visible income, but some of it, at least, could at need be used in lieu of income till it was exhausted, and therefore in a modern balance-sheet would be expressed in terms of accruing interest. In other words, even excluding all fixed assets, the actual liquid wealth of the monasteries, all question of undervaluation apart, was considerably greater than the figures of gross or net income would suggest and these amounts would, if expressed, emphasize still more the great inequalities of wealth among the houses. The Valor Ecclesiasticus was analysed, now almost fifty years ago, with patient and scholarly thoroughness by a Russian scholar, A. Savine.1 1 Savine's work is careful and impartial, and a great deal of information can be extracted from it by a patient reader, but the treatment is not always lucid, and some names and figures, which might well have been printed in appendices, cumber the pages and interrupt the flow of the argument. Naturally, it is vain to seek in Savine's pages for a treatment of points of financial and economic history which have only become fashionable or controversial since he wrote. Moreover, he had little familiarity with the sources of monastic history in the later Middle Ages, and he occasionally uses the silences or omissions of the Valor to establish general conclusions which can be invalidated by positive evidence from another source. Nevertheless, his work remains very valuable after fifty years, though it can

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Within his self-imposed limits of enquiry, Savine's work was accurate and definitive, and it would be a waste of time for another to work through the Valor again in search of answers to the same questions. Savine, however, though remarkably alert on all economic and agrarian problems, was more interested in figures and statistics than in trends and developments, and there are many questions now commonly asked by economic historians which he never put to himself. Moreover, though he made good use of other quasi-contemporary surveys, he did not take a view of his subject from the different angle which even fifty years ago was provided by printed monastic accounts such as those of Durham and its dependent priories. These would have shown him (what has been shown still more amply since his day) that the monastic income was underestimated by the commissioners of 1535 even more than he supposed, that errors in valuation and computation are so frequent in the Valor as probably to affect even the statistical percentages obtained from large groups of entries, that in particular the amount of industrial activity, especially in coal-winning, was a notable feature in the economy of monasteries in County Durham and Northumberland and elsewhere, and that the area of waste and spoiled land, especially in the north, was greater and more significant than he realized.1 Nevertheless, his general statistics and conclusions are in the main valid, and as the figures in the Valor, which are themselves not fully complete, can be replaced by more accurate ones only for scattered groups of houses, it will be best to use the figures of the commissioners of the tenth throughout, unless otherwise noted, though the reader must bear in mind that the aggregate incomes given, whether gross or net, are probably less by some 20 per cent than the actual income of the house in cash or cash value during the last decade of its history. Thus Glastonbury, with an income in the Valor of £3311 net, may easily have handled a sum much nearer £4000. The total income of the religious houses as extracted from the Valor is of little significance when the total national income is unknown. For England alone, it has been calculated that the total gross income of monks, canons, nuns and knights hospitallers amounted to some £16 5,50c2 Threeand should be supplemented for the regions concerned by the studies of W. J. Archbold, The Somerset Religious Houses \ J. W. Clay, Yorkshire Monastic Suppression Papers (YAS, Rec. Ser., XLVIII) ; D. Hay, * The Dissolution of the Monasteries in the Diocese of Durham'; and F. A. Hibbert, Dissolution of the Monasteries of Staffordshire. I have also used an unpublished Ph.D. thesis of Trinity College, Dublin, by Mr G. W. O. Woodward, The Benedictines and Cistercians in Yorkshire in the Sixteenth Century (1955). 1 This emerges clearly from D. Hay's article, as also from several of the Durham account rolls of the preceding century. 2 This is Savine's figure (p. 100), with the addition of jCifoo to cover the four houses omitted by him and another £1500 or so for the hospitallers. It must be remembered that he includes neither Wales nor the friars. Allowing for the wide margin of undervaluation, the real value for the same houses was perhaps j£ 200,000. For a present-day (1957) equivalent we should have to think in terms of £20 m. or so, but that sum would of course be a far smaller part of the national income to-day than was the aggregate total of the religious in 1535. Savine'sfigureis for 5 53 houses, and his list is in many ways an arbitrary selection. The

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quarters of this were made up of temporal income, the spiritual income accounting for the remainder. About one-sixth of the gross income was recognized as tax-free; this was undoubtedly a smaller proportion than justice and an equitable interpretation of the statute would have demanded. It seems useless to enquire what total acreage of land lay behind this income. The surveys rarely give acreage at all fully, and attempts to translate incomes from rents into acres are fruitless. Moreover, any reckoning based on income would fail to take account of unexploited land or moorland grazing. Of greater interest for the monastic historian is an analysis of the houses according to wealth. Here it has been reckoned that if all are classed in five divisions, made up of the very small (under £20 per annum), small (£20 to £100), medium (£100 to £300), large (£300 to £1000) and very large (over £1000), the first class contains about 9 per cent, the second and third each 35 per cent (the second being slightly the smaller of the two), the fourth 16 per cent and the fifth 4 per cent. If, on the other hand, the aggregate wealth of the various classes be considered, the last class, that of the very rich monasteries, some twenty-three out of 5 50 in number, accounts for more than a quarter of the total sum.1 From the details supplied by the Valor and other surveys, it is possible to gain a very fair idea of the sources and kinds of monastic income, and a careful analysis shows, what is apparent from all earlier indications, not only that the monks stood in the position of renders for most of their income, but that the practice of farming all kinds of revenue was universal; this is true of the spiritual revenue as well as of the temporal. The spiritual income formed about a quarter of the gross total income of all the houses, and perhaps one-fifth of the taxable amount; it should, however, be added that the proportion was much greater than this in the counties of Durham and Northumberland, owing to the harrying that much of the land had suffered in the past fifty years.2 The bulk of this income was obtained from the churches, many of which the monks had held from the earliest times. Its sources were tithes, glebe, pensions from churches and offerings. Of these tithe in one shape or another yielded the most, some five-sixths of the whole. These revenues might be gathered in detail by bailiffs or receivers, or by local agents who collected the other rents or farmed the manor, but very often they were leased out to a farmer by virtue of episcopal or papal permission; whole rectories had been so estimated number of religious houses in c. 1530, excluding 187 friaries and all hospitals, is in the region of 650 (cf. Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, 364). The difference is largely accounted for by the merging of dependencies with the owning house in the Valor', the discrepancy scarcely affects the validity of Savine's general conclusions. 1 Savine, 114—15. For a comparison of the relative wealth of the largest houses in the Domesday survey, v. Appendix IV, infra. 2 This is another point demonstrated by Hay. He does not add, however, that even the spiritual income of die lands beyond Tyne had fallen greatly from its fourteenth-century peak for similar reasons (v. ROt 11, 317).

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leased, as we have seen, long before the sixteenth century, and in such cases all connection was severed between the monks and their parishioners. Of the remainder, offerings accounted for an insignificant fraction; in earlier centuries the body of a saint, real or reputed, or a celebrated relic had often been a principal source of wealth; by the sixteenth century this had ceased; two of the most famous shrines of an earlier age, those of St Thomas of Canterbury and of the Holy Blood at Hailes, now received only £36 and £10 respectively. Walsingham alone, with an income in offerings of £250, recalled the generosity and faith of the past.1 Of the temporal income perhaps one-eighth came from urban properties and from quaestual and industrial sources of all kinds. Monasteries in the city of London or on its outskirts naturally owned much house property and urban land, but only in a few cases, such as the London Charterhouse, the Cistercian St Mary Graces and the Austin St Mary of Southwark, did such revenues amount to more than a half of the temporal total.2 Industrial and commercial concerns occupied a still less important place. They had indeed recently been banned to the monasteries by statute, and even the growing of grain for market had been banned to the larger houses,3 but there is no evidence that this had led to the extinction or transference of business on any appreciable scale, though it may well have led to judicious suppressions in the statements provided for the commissioners. If we except mills, which had from the beginning yielded income to the religious of a kind more feudal than industrial, the small tanneries, fulling mills and mines of salt held by the monks were insignificant. Only the Tyneside coal of Durham and its satellites, and the Cornish tin of Tavistock were of any consequence, and unfortunately the former of these is far from fully accounted for in the Valor, and the latter not at all. Durham and Finchale, in particular, had been exploiting coalpits for more than two centuries, and in the fifteenth century had often leased them for appreciable sums, but so far as can be ascertained from the accounts, they had the pits in hand at the time of the Dissolution, and used the produce lavishly for their own needs. Other houses, also, with properties in coal-bearing districts, such as Furness, Newminster and Flaxley in the Forest of Dean, used coal for fuel and thus made use of a source of invisible income that 1 Savine, 103. In the year of the translation of the relics of St Thomas in 1220 the oblations at the shrine amounted to c. £1142 of the then currency (J. B. Sheppard, Literae Cantuarienses, n, xlvia, d; R. A. L. Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 12) the offerings at Durham had shown a corresponding fall. V. also J. C. Dickinson, Walsingham, 60, citing VE, in, 386. 2 Savine, 118—19. 3 Statutes of the Realm, in, 292-6 (21 Henry VIII, c. 13). Breweries and tanneries were specifically forbidden. Agriculture and stock-raising beyond the needs of domestic consumption and hospitality were forbidden to the greater houses with over 800 marks (£533) of revenue; the smaller houses were allowed to cultivate any demesne which they had exploited during the previous century. Traffic also was forbidden (par. 5):' Spiritual persons shall not buy any merchandise for resale.'

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never appeared in the Valor.1 As for the markets, which had once formed an item of importance, they had now ceased to be a significant source of profit, and thefisherieshad lost their value in the face of competition from the increasing quantity of deep-sea fish now being supplied throughout the country, though here again it is certain that the religious had useful sources of invisible income not registered in the Valor. Another dwindling revenue was that from the courts of manor and hundred controlled by the monks, for even if the admission fines of leases, which were paid to the manor court, are reckoned in, the curial revenues did not greatly exceed, on the average for the whole country, some five per cent of the total income.2 There remains the temporal income drawn directly from the land, whether from demesne or whole manors put out to farm, from tenements, from rents for smaller holdings, from woods, and from produce of the land supplied by such of the demesne as was still exploited by the religious. This, which accounted for some two-thirds of the total income of the religious houses, was the foundation of the whole fabric. Of the six divisions just mentioned, by far the most important were the leases of manors and the rents from small holdings.3 By the sixteenth century the estimated receipts from demesne in hand and from the woods that had not been leased amounted to something less than one-tenth of the total rural receipts, though this fraction could be slightly lessened or considerably increased, as has been suggested above, by consistently treating the woods either as interest-paying capital or (as contemporaries seem to have regarded them) as liquid assets comparable to a store of grain or hay. In any case, the figures given are alone enough to indicate that the days of high farming were over for the monasteries, and the figures of the Valor accord so well with those in compotus rolls and surveys of a slightly earlier date that it is unlikely that the disappearance of farming for the market was due in any notable degree to the statute of 1529. Of the two main classes of holding, manors, that is, and separate tenancies, the former accounted for the larger part of the income; thus the important abbey of Battle kept only one of its twenty-three manors in hand, and the wealthy nunnery of Shaftesbury drew almost all its landed income from leased manors.4 Within the manors the distinction between demesne and 1 Savine, 122 seqq. There is no adequate study of monastic coal-mining; the only survey is the paper by Dr J. B. Simpson,' Coal-mining by the monks', in Transactions of the Institute of Mining Engineers, 39. Dr Simpson shows that not only in Tyneside, but at Beauchief and die houses mentioned in the text, the monks made use of local supplies of coal. He states (without references) that Tynemouth in 1538 leased a pit for £50 p.a. In 1532 the Bursar at Durham spent ^ 7 in wages to winners of coal (Jucracio carbonurri) in addition to £ 3 . 4s. for picks, baskets (? shovels, scopae\ rope and pro exasperacione (i.e. sharpening) le pykkys. Cf. Durham Household Book, 184—5. 2 Savine, 138. The figures of curial revenue are particularly difficult to interpret, and the amount in the Valor seems to have been a notional, estimated one, not an actual receipt; in some cases admission fines were included, elsewhere not. 3 Ibid. 141 seqq. 4 Ibid. 153, 155. At St Augustine's, Bristol, out of fifteen manors c. 1500, five were farmed out entirely, five had their demesnes farmed, and five were managed for the abbey by a bailiff (BRS, ix, 40).

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tenancies still existed, and within the demesne itself there were often tenurial holdings, but on monastic estates as elsewhere the intermingling of strips had in great part disappeared with the cessation of week- and boon-works on the one hand, and with enclosures and concentration of strips on the other; the demesne had often simply become a large farm, with house and offices. The minor tenancies were of all kinds; freehold, copyhold, leasehold and tenancies at will. Where the whole manor was farmed the tenants had no direct connection with the monastery; where the demesne alone was leased or where the monks kept it in hand the rents were collected and repairs effected by the monastic officials or their representatives. The need for the direct exploitation of the land by the monks for their own household consumption had always been and still was lessened by the existence of payments in kind. These were still surprisingly common in 1535, and it is almost certain that they were in fact more numerous than the pages of the Valor suggest. Not only was tithe often paid in grain, but renders in kind were not uncommon in lieu of rent for tenancies and demesne that was leased out. They were of all kinds: corn, hay, poultry, eggs, cheese, pigs and cattle; and they varied very greatly in relation to money rents as between house and house. Thus at Furness in Lancashire one-seventh of the total income was in kind, and at St Augustine's, Canterbury, almost one-fifth of the very large income (£309 out of £1684), whereas at the neighbouring priory of Christ Church there is record in the Valor of only £ 7 in kind out of an income even larger.1 Such payments in kind as remained were chiefly from demesne, and are no doubt a survival of the old food-farms of the manors; the only house where payments in kind by customary tenants in lieu of rent were large was Worcester, and it is interesting to note the persistence there of the system that had been in vogue five centuries before in the days of Wulfstan.2 The monasteries still owned considerable flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, and studs of horses, and here till the end, after satisfying their own needs, they looked to the market for income, but the Valor, unlike Domesday', is very inconsistent in its mention of beasts. While the returns from Dorset contain accounts of numerous flocks, those of Somerset and Suffolk, even more celebrated as grazing counties, make no mention of sheep; the profits there are no doubt merged in the general sum put to the credit of a manor, though we may suspect that here, even more than in other matters, the calculation of average sales would err considerably in a conservative direction. The whole question of livestock on the eve of the Dissolution is, however, surrounded with difficulties. In addition to 1 This, however, is almost certainly a case where the silence, or method of composition, of the Valor is deceptive. As recently as 1504-5 the garnerer's accounts of Christ Church show 686 bushels of corn received as food farm (R. A. L. Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory', 201). 2 Savine, 163; cf. MO> 442.

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our ignorance of the effect of the act of 1529,1 it is certain that even before 1535 some houses were selling off their stock for cash, and the number of head owned by Fountains, once so rich in herds, when the final survey was taken, is almost negligible. On the other hand, even small nunneries appear in their surveys as owners of sizeable flocks which must have produced far more mutton and wool than the religious would need for themselves.2 It has often been stated in the past, and repeated at second-hand till the present, that the religious were as a class insolvent, and that their economy was on the point of collapse, even when they had no external enemy. So far as can be seen, this opinion was based partly on a few scattered accusations of Tudor writers and visitors, and partly on the assumption that all aspects of the monastic life were in a process of steady deterioration during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and that if occasional financial failures took place in 1400, an almost general bankruptcy would ensure a century later. Such a result, in an age when the wealth of the country was still almost entirely in the hands of landholders, and when the religious were great landlords with all the advantages of undying possession, could only result from universal mismanagement resulting from either simplicity or incompetence or corruption, and, of these, the last alternative was usually chosen, however unconsciously, by historians. It will be well, therefore, to consider first whether the religious were as a body insolvent, and then to review the manner in which they spent their vast aggregate wealth. The Valor, being of its very nature an assessment of income for taxation, gives no information as to the balance between income and expenditure, but we have the account rolls of representative houses in the early decades of the sixteenth century and, as giving still more precise information, we have exact statements of the amount of debt with which numerous monasteries were burdened at the time of the Dissolution. Some of these are supplied by incidental letters of the religious themselves, or of the governmental agents, but the majority come from the findings of the commissioners sent round to survey the lesser houses prior to suppression, or appointed to wind up the affairs of a larger house that had surrendered to the king. The account rolls, which survive chiefly from the large and well-ordered houses,3 make it clear that at these the chief officials (and by the sixteenth century the administration was generally centralized for all practical purposes in the hands of a single superior or obedientary) had 1 The statute of 1529 does not seem to have covered sheep farming. 2 Savine, 178, concludes: 'In spite of the fact that pasture was twice as valuable as arable land, that monasteries were in a large way of business, and that they had particular reasons to reduce the amount of their arable [sc. both the statutory prohibition and the need to reduce overheads], yet up to the last the monks tilled almost as much land as they kept for grazing purposes/ 3 Three notable examples are Durham (numerous vols. in SS)t Worcester (vols. in WHS) and St Augustine's, Bristol (BRS, ix).

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no difficulty in keeping expenditure within the limit set by income, and of having a surplus from year to year, or when required. The commissioners of 1536, charged with reporting on the finances of the smaller houses recently declared to be liable to suppression, were specifically instructed to discover the sums owed by, and owing to, the house, and from their returns exact figures are available for more than fifty monasteries of men and women scattered over all England south of the Trent and west of the Pennines.1 To these may be added some other isolated entries from Yorkshire and elsewhere. Many of these are cited by Savine, and a review of the whole number does nothing to weaken his general conclusion that the monastic property 'was not encumbered by enormous debts'.2 Among these houses every degree of financial liability is found, from a positive credit balance to a burden of debt exceeding the annual income of the house, but heavy debts of the latter class are exceptional. The case of Athelney, often quoted, where the abbot pleaded debts of £860 against a net income of perhaps £240, would appear to be unique, and the list of his debts, with which he furnished Cromwell, has several curious features.3 For the smaller houses a rough calculation from the figures of thirty taken from among the monks, canons and nuns of Norfolk, Hampshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire suggests that the aggregate debts amount to something less than 40 per cent of the aggregate annual net revenue. For the larger houses that were not affected by the act of 1536 we have to depend on other and more scattered evidence provided by the suppression commissioners and incidental sources of information; the general picture is similar, but the overall indebtedness would seem to reach a considerably smaller percentage of the much greater incomes, and some of the greatest nouses, of which Worcester and Durham may be taken as examples, seem to have been virtually clear of debt. 1 Abstracts of these are in LPy x, 916-17; ibid. 1191 (i)-(v); and LP, xi, Appendix 2, p. 2. These cover Leics, Warwicks, Rutland, Sussex and a few houses in Hunts and Lanes. Others, covering Norfolk, Hants, Wilts and a few houses in Glos, were noted and in part printed by F. A. Gasquet in 'Overlooked testimonies to the character of the English monasteries on the eve of their suppression', in DubR, cxiv (April 1894), 245-77. These last, strangely enough, have continued to be overlooked by historians, including their editor, who never inserted their evidence in'his other work, and Savine. For this and subsequent chapters transcripts of all these documents were obtained, and the facts and figures are based on the texts. 2 Savine, 216-17. He concludes: 'It is evident that they [sc. the monastic debts] did not seriously affect the financial results of the Dissolution.* With this Hibbert {Dissolution of the Monasteries, 187) agrees:' Their normal debts represent only the casual credit of ordinary life.... In the ordinary course of events [they] would have been discharged in due course.' 3 The abbot's letter and list are in Archbold, 29-33. The largest items are £66 due to the king, £90 to Glastonbury and £80 to the abbot of Dunkeswell, a Cistercian house in Devon. These total £236. Creditors, seemingly 'private', account for another £260. Abbot Robert was clearly the classical type of debt-addict; he lived in the rosy unreality of Mr Micawber, and could hope that Cromwell would' prouyde som remedye', specifically if he 'cowlde have a frynd that wold lene me iiij or v hundret poundes wtout ony prophete or lucoure* he would easily be able 'to paye the reste out of hande*. Oddly enough, the neighbouring Muchelney, like Athelney a house closely linked with Glastonbury, had the unusually heavy debt of £400. V. letters in Archbold, S.R.H. 29 seqq., 68 seqq.

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Furthermore, it is by no means clear that the load of debt was in fact as solid and formidable as it appears at first sight. In many cases the government commissioners, and occasionally the superiors or officials of the houses concerned, set out their debts in detail. The general pattern of their statements is the same, from whatever part of the country they hail,1 and it warns us that, before any pronouncement on the quality of a debt, the total sum must be broken down and examined. Every kind of liability and creditor is included: arrears of tax to the king, or of synodal and other dues to the bishop, pensions to vicars, even clothes-money to the monks.2 Among individual creditors tradesmen, merchants and lawyers appear indeed, but they rarely account for a large part of the debt. This is in almost every case, whatever the size of the house, owing to private individuals, both ecclesiastics and laymen, who have lent to the house. A careful examination of a number of these lists, with all their local and social implications, would form a valuable contribution to Tudor economic history. The impression given is that a number of these loans were either goodwill contributions to a building fund or even virtually savings deposits, and in any case regarded by their owners as long-term transactions. In other words, much of the debt could be kept floating indefinitely by small annual payments which would prevent arrears from accumulating and would satisfy private individuals of substance almost as would the payment of interest or a dividend to-day. Moreover, it would be a mistake to look at the debts in vacuo, so to say, without at the same time considering assets which would appear on the other side of a modern balance-sheet. Thus, quite apart from the capital value of buildings, lead, treasure, woods, etc., which the commissioners reckon separately, many of the houses had very large stores of grain and fodder wholly in excess of what was needed by the community before the next harvest, as also much livestock with young beasts suitable for sale or slaughter. Thus the Cistercian Netley, with a debt of only £144, had stores and stock to the value of £114; the nearby Quarr, with £45 of debt, had stores of £241; while Stanley (Wilts) could place stores of £189 against a debt of £272.3 In these cases and many others, the bulk of these stocks might be counted a liquid asset with as much reason as are the unsold flour of a miller or the stores of a grain merchant at the present day. Finally, it must be remembered that no mention is made in any of these assessments of what would now be found as cash in hand on current 1 The Benedictine abbot of Athelney's debts may be compared with those of the Cistercian abbot of Dieulacres (Hibbert, Dissolution, app. v, 243-4), of the Augustinian abbot of Lilleshall (M. E. Walcot, 'Inventories and Valuations of Religious Houses at the time of the Dissolution', in Archaeobgiay XLIII), and of the prior of St Thomas at Stafford (ibid.\ whose debts were almost all to regional gentry. In the last case Hibbert (pp. cit. 187) does well to point out that the prior was doubtless largely behindhand owing to the necessity of paying a fine of £153 for licence to exist. 2 Walcot, art. cit, 3 PRO, S.C. 12/33, 27, m. 1; ibid. m. 2.

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account at the bank. We know from other sources that many houses had a considerable overall profit on the year's working,1 and that almost all had a common treasure chest or reserve fund, though there is very little information as to how far surpluses on the year's working remained as book-entries or some elementary form of credit or tally, and how far they stood for coin in the common chest, but that there was somewhere a pool of money, and that every obedientiary must have had a considerable store of ready cash is unquestionable, and at a house such as Durham, where surpluses sometimes ran to £1000 or more, the amount must at times have been considerable.2 All this, again, would count against the debts in a modern balance-sheet. In short, from whatever angle we look at the matter, the financial state of the monasteries taken as a class appears far less unsound than might be suggested by the rehearsal of a list of debts. It would be misleading to confuse the centuries, and to think of the age of Henry VIII in terms of the age of Henry II. Then, when the quantity of cash in circulation was relatively small, and reserves were held by very few, the great abbey of Bury could be for a time completely in the clutches of a few Jewish moneylenders. In Wolsey's day the wealth of the country, and the number of men with money, had greatly increased, and at least some ease of credit and space for manoeuvre existed. The resources of the monasteries, save for a few very small or very badly mismanaged houses, were well able to carry the normal expenditure and overhead costs, and they would in due time doubtless have adjusted rents to meet the price rise that may have been temporarily shaking their balance. Indeed, the whole question of monastic solvency requires more careful treatment than it has received. Too often it has been regarded superficially and censoriously, in much the same temper as prosperous Victorians regarded the bankruptcy of a tradesman, and the fact that the house concerned did in fact survive without either catastrophe or wholesale repudiation of debt has not been taken into account. Only a very careful examination, for which documentary evidence is often lacking, would distinguish between debts of culpability and prodigality, debts of misfortune and miscalculation in a period of economic change, and debts which, both financially and ethically, differed little in character from periodical overdrafts or mortgages raised on the credit of the house. No one can study, however superficially, the figures of monastic finance in the later Middle Ages without asking himself how these great incomes were absorbed and whether the waste was great. In other words, did not the income of the larger houses far exceed any reasonable needs of a body professing a life of self-discipline, if not of self-denial, of simplicity, if not 1 Durham in 1536—7 had a profit'of about £9 and a 'superplus' of £844 ('Rotuli Bursarii, 1536-7* in DAR, in, 690-707). 2 The bursar of Durham had a store of coin of high denominations; cf. Durham Household Booky 92, where 40 shillings are paid to the subprior in auro in scaccario bursarii; the archdeacon of the East Riding paid in auro; the master of the infirmary paid in aurot vtf., George Nobyls.

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of austerity, in common life together? Where, for instance, did the £4000 odd of Glastonbury's income go after fifty monks had been fed? To these questions, if they are understood in a purely spiritual sense, a direct answer can certainly be given. Not only at the epoch of the Dissolution, but for an undefined and very long period previously, the monks and canons of England, with a few notable exceptions, had been living on a scale of personal comfort and corporate magnificence, and with a variety of receipts and expenses of all kinds, which were neither necessary for, nor consistent with, the fashion of life indicated by their rule and early institutions. It would, however, unduly simplify monastic history to be content with this answer, which is, indeed, not one with which the historian as such is concerned. His task, rather, is to discover whether the income of the religious houses was, from a purely financial and economic aspect, excessively great: whether, to speak in modern phrase, the yearly balancesheet showed, or could be made to show, a profit which was, economically speaking, too great; whether such profits were justified by the use to which they were put, or whether, on the other hand, waste and superfluous expenditure drained away at the source what should have been a fair profit. These are questions which, if they are to be satisfactorily answered, require the data of a whole series of studies covering particular houses and orders and periods of time; nevertheless, from c. 1400 onwards, the general stability and similarity of practice and economic conditions among all classes of religious throughout the country allows of a generalization which is perhaps reliable in its essentials. First, then, if we regard the monastic finances from an accountant's point of view, without, that is, considering the intrinsic value or relevance of the objects upon which the expenses are incurred, we shall not find that the profits under normal good management were excessive. If we consider a large house of over £500 net income, the pattern of expenditure will be of the following kind.1 Royal and papal subsidies, including taxes, aids, benevolences, subsidies and dues of all kinds; payments and presents of every description to officials and magnates, together with the routine spiritual fees to bishop or chapter, regularly absorbed a portion of the revenues which might be as great as one-sixth over a period of years. The expenses of maintenance, administration and restocking the property and manors normally consumed at least one-fifth of the income, and another large fraction went as an allowance, or to meet the expenses, of the abbot or prior and his household. An abbot would receive anything from onefifth to one-quarter; a prior considerably less, perhaps only one-tenth. Finally, one-third or more went to the clothing and feeding of the monks, the household and the guests. The balance, which in a good year at a wellordered house might vary from one-tenth to one-fifth of the whole, was 1 What follows is largely a conflation of the data obtainable from the very full sixteenthcentury accounts of Durham, Worcester and St Augustine's, Bristol j cf. also the precis of Huntingdon in Gasquet, Henry VIII, ist ed., II, 507.

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available for building or for extraordinary repairs or for sinking a debt, or it might be simply carried forward as surplus. In practice, however, a whole series of charges, individually extraordinary but statistically normal, such as lawsuits, loss or damage from wars, tempests, unseasonable weather or animal diseases, cut down the profits, while the costs of maintenance and repair mounted with every decade that passed and with every new addition to the buildings. Thus what might have been a profit amounting to 30 per cent or more of the income was often all but absorbed in the recurring expenses of taxation, litigation and repairs.1 Regarded more particularly from an economist's point of view, the monastic system had throughout the later Middle Ages three very weak spots: the separate establishment of the superior; the decentralization of finances; and the wasteful and superfluous elements in the household. The first, in which must be included also the allowances, generous in amount though of sporadic occurrence, to ex-superiors, had existed for four centuries. The circumstances which had partially caused or partially justified the system had largely ceased to operate with the decline of feudalism and of the position of the monastic superiors in public life, but the ideas which it reflected had taken such root that nothing short of a social revolution could have removed them. The radical vice of the system was that it earmarked a large fraction of the income of the house to the support of a second household that was economically superfluous, and put a large sum every year at the free disposal of one of its members. The detailed accounts of the spending of Prior More of Worcester from 1518 to 1535 show what a great deal of economically useless spending was possible to a superior of a medium-sized house while remaining well within his allowance. More's elaborate reconditioning and furnishing of several of his manor-houses, to say nothing of his large and purely ornamental staff and his purchases of vestments and jewellery, were all economically superfluous. The almost contemporary career of Richard Bere at Glastonbury is an instance of similar, or even greater, expenditure on like objects. The decentralization of administration was likewise of very old standing, and equally indefensible on the economic level. Some of the efforts to diminish its evil effects have already been noted;2 on the whole it may be said that, while they had effected considerable improvements in administration and accountancy, there still remained unnecessary expenses of duplicated staffs and overhead charges, together with multiplied chances of 1 The Bristol accounts give precise figures for the accounting years 1491—2 and 1511—12, which the editors tabulate as in a modern balance-sheet. In the earlier year the expenses were £704, with a credit balance of £14; in the latter £528 with a credit of £90. The difference in expenses was due almost entirely to items in 1491 -2 of £112 and £40 in taxes and litigation, compared with £24 and £1 in 1511-12. In each year the abbot's portion of the income was upwards of £160 (i«e. one-quarter of the earlier total and one-third of the later); provisions, clothing and wages were constants at £28-32, £12 and £26 respectively (BRS, ix, 60-3). 2 RO} 11, 312.

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inefficiency. At many houses, however, the early Tudor practice of superiors in taking into their hands one or more of the most important spending offices had removed some of the worst dangers of the system.1 The third weakness, that of the over-great and wasteful household, was not peculiar to the religious, but made itself felt in all great establishments, from the court downwards. It was in a sense inevitable in a society where the material needs of life were met very largely from stocks produced automatically from the resources of the consumers themselves, and not bought on the market strictly according to need; where the custom of lifelong attachment in return for service had not yet fully given place to a wage economy, and where hospitality was comprehensive and lavish in scale, and irregular and sudden in its demands upon resources; where charity was occasional and equally lavish; and where, finally, provision had always to be made for several households under one roof. Under such conditions, the supply of staple commodities in normal seasons must often have exceeded the average demand, with the inevitable consequence of waste in the preparation and consumption, as also in the disposal, of such surplus stock as must almost always have accrued. Even in modern society, where commercial organizations exist in all centres of population to dispose of surplus and spoiled products at a lower level of subsistence, the waste of bread, vegetables, milk and all perishables at a large school or catering establishment is very great, and possibly even greater per caput in private households. At a medieval monastery it must have been much greater, for the fixed measures and double portions, and the traditional gift of all broken meats to the poor, encouraged and almost sanctified lavish provision, and the example of promiscuous hospitality and charity must have encouraged dependants of every degree to pass on superfluous food and stores to their families and friends outside the gate. Finally, the price of both food and clothes rose relatively far more steeply once the roughest and commonest fabrics and commodities were left behind than it does in the modern world. A roli of fine cloth or a box of spices, for example, stood relatively far higher in comparison with a carcass of mutton or pork than it does to-day. It was here that the religious spent a great part of their income, for there is general agreement that the black monks and canons, at least, used good quality cloth both for their own habits and for their gifts of gowns and liveries, as there is also general agreement that, even apart from a fair measure of sheer waste, the monks of the larger abbeys enjoyed, if not a more abundant, at least a more expensive and recherche fare than all save the most prosperous classes in the land. When we consider the monastic economy from a social and a human, rather than from a purely economic point of view, we can make a series of observations. First, the sums of money, both absolute and relative to the total income, spent on food and drink appear excessive, and this con1 RO, 11, 328-9.

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elusion is borne out by all detailed examinations of the quantity, quality and variety of the materials consumed. Secondly, while the revenue was— at least as a long-term income for all except the very largest and the very smallest houses—fixed, the expenditure was very elastic, and this not only in the sense that many expenses, such as lawsuits and taxes, repairs and replacements, were either very irregular or could be deferred for an indefinite time, but also that at any given moment, provided that no scheme of retrenchment was already in operation, lasting economies could be effected out of hand by drastic sumptuary measures and reductions of staff, without in any real sense affecting the well-being of the religious. Only thus can we explain the remarkable resiliency shown by monasteries of all orders and sizes when controlled by a superior who earnestly desired to sink debt or find cash for building schemes. No doubt, especially for the latter purpose, an abbot would often mortgage the future by converting customary rents to leases with high admission fines, but opportunities for this expedient were limited, and a long series of remarkable and swift recoveries, from the days of Samson to those of Bere, shows that there was almost always a wide margin between necessary and normal expenditure. The economic crisis of 1929-35 and the two World Wars have amply demonstrated that private families and institutions of all kinds can retrench very drastically without serious loss to health and happiness for themselves, though it is also true that the cultural and economic wellbeing of the whole population could not easily be maintained if private expenses never rose above the level of those abnormal years. When all is said and done, perhaps two impressions remain most clearly in the minds of those who have pondered over a long series of monastic account rolls. The one is that, even in the wealthiest houses, there was very little wasteful and uneconomic spending, save for the important items of the abbot's income and foodstuffs, though it is also probable that the wealthier houses had none of the spurs to economy such as are automatic in a modern business concern that judges success by large profits rather than by the achievement of an easy balance. The other is that, even granted all this, yet there is something fundamentally amiss, socially as well as spiritually, when a community of fifty or less men or women, vowed to the monastic life, administers vast estates and draws large revenues which are not used for any spiritual purpose, just as they have not been earned by any work of mental, material or spiritual charity.

2<$O

CHAPTER XXI

SERVANTS, A L M S G I V I N G AND C O R R O D I A N S No feature of the monastic economy in Tudor days has been more severely criticized than the alleged superfluity of servants and dependants. The numbers are certainly formidable when seen in the aggregate at a large house, and when compared with the numbers of the religious. Thus at Rievaulx there were, at the Dissolution, one hundred and two ' servants' to twenty-two monks; at Gloucester the ratio was eighty-six to twentysix; at Byland eighty to twenty-five; and at Butley seventy-one to thirteen.1 Moreover, quite apart from precise figures, there are the recurrent complaints of visiting bishops over two or more centuries, while the satirists and reformers dilate upon the hordes of lazy dependants who do nothing but eat and sleep; the term * abbey lubber' was indeed coined to describe such men and their likes. There is, therefore, every excuse for the general reader to suppose that the monastic servants were a principal cause of any insolvency that might exist, and there has been a marked tendency on the part of both critics and apologists of the monks to stress, if not to exaggerate, the figures for their different purposes. The strictures of Coulton and others are familiar to all; on the other hand Gasquet, writing seventy years ago and concerned to emphasize the disturbance to society caused by the disappearance of the monasteries, did not hesitate to say, after fixing the number of dispossessed religious at eight thousand, that' probably more than ten times that number of people were their dependents or otherwise obtained a living in their service'.2 If these words have any definite meaning, and are not intended to include the families of employees or the large outer circle of shopkeepers and middlemen occupied chiefly with monastic traffic, they imply that the religious of England maintained either by wages or alms the stupendous total of over eighty thousand servants and dependants. It is not surprising, therefore, to find a moderate writer such as Trevelyan alluding to the * large companies of monastic servants'.3 That a superfluity of hands existed at many monasteries need not be denied. Few large establishments in any age, least of all those charged with catering for a fluctuating or seasonal household, are entirely successful in eliminating waste or securing the maximum output of work. Large households and troops of servants and hangers-on of every description were characteristic of the Tudor age, and did not disappear with the abbeys. Travellers and satirists continued to gird at the system throughout the 1 The figures for Rievaulx and Byland are taken from Woodward, 72, citing PRO, S.C. 6 Henry VIII, 7452; those for Gloucester, from Savine, 225; for Butley, from the Chronicle, ed. A. G. Dickens, App. 1. 2 Henry VIII\ 359—60. 3 History of England, 284.

26l

Elizabethan age. A large monastery in or near a town, or lying on a main road, would have been of all households the most difficult to rationalize under medieval conditions. Nor need we doubt that at the larger houses of black monks and canons the separate household of the prelate, with the files of liveried servants kept chiefly for display, were an obvious, not to say scandalous, target for the critics. But before accepting the vast numbers alleged, and the assertion of their redundancy, it is well to control such statements by means of some reliable figures of the numbers employed and of the precise categories of employment or dependency into which they fell. Fortunately, such figures are available in some abundance. The commissioners sent round in the spring and summer of 1536, to survey anew the resources of the smaller houses that had become forfeit by the act of that year, were required to give the numbers of those dependent in any way upon each house, and in most cases they understood these instructions as requiring them to state precisely the categories of employment and dependency into which they fell. Though they differ both in the details they give and the nomenclature they adopt, these lists do in fact give a fairly accurate picture of the staff on the pay-roll and the persons on the alms-list of each house. Some of these lists may have perished; others may still await discovery; but already full returns of this kind are available for the counties of Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Norfolk, Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, together with partial returns from Yorkshire, Lancashire and Essex.1 They cover some fifty-four houses of men of all orders (excluding friars) and some twenty-six houses of women, and the numbers of religious concerned are in the region of 424 men and 274 women.2 All the houses are * lesser' houses with an income below £200 per annum, save for two Yorkshire abbeys, Rievaulx and Byland, and St Mary's nunnery at Winchester, which fell into an inappropriate category owing to a fraudulent return of its income made at the assessment for the tenth, but there is no reason to suppose that the picture at a small or mediocre house differed greatly from that at one of the larger houses save in scale and in the existence in the latter group of the class of personal attendants upon the superior that has been referred to already. The houses of men in these lists had depending upon them some 1360 souls; the nuns provided a livelihood for 516. The respective ratios of religious to dependents are therefore in the neighbourhood of 1:3-2 (men) 1 The printed (and in some cases abbreviated or summary) versions of these have been listed supra, p. 253 n. i. In what follows I have used transcripts of the original documents. The references are: Leics, IVarwicks, Rutland: PRO, E. 36/154/48 to 63; BM. Cott. Cleo. E. iv, fos. 336—40v (=old pagination 280—4v) covering Huntingdon A. canons, Sawtrey Cist, and Stonely A. canons. Lanes: B.M. Cott. Cleo. E. iv, fo. 343 (=288). Hants, Wilts and Glos: PRO, S.C. 12/33/27 (M1-3). Norfolk: PRO, S.C. 12/33/29 (Mi-8). Sussex: PRO, S.C. 5/3/128. 2 For the calculation in this paragraph houses for which no return of servants is available have been ignored.

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and 1:1-9 (women). This, however, means little, for among the dependants the commissioners reckoned not only all the agricultural and pastoral labourers and servants, but all those kept at alms or on a pension, and also (in the case of the nuns) the chaplains and clerics. All these, in the abbreviated lists such as those surviving for the half-dozen Lancashire houses, are included under the heading of servants. To be of significance for our purpose the figures must be broken down, and here the commissioners in most cases give us fairly adequate assistance. To begin with, those who are in any way a charge on the establishment as beneficiaries by alms Or covenant must be eliminated: corrodians, children, pensioned servants and simple almspeople. This class, in all the lists where details are available, gives a total of 170 at the houses of men, and forty-four at those of women. Next, the labourers or * hinds' as they are universally styled, must be dismissed. They form by far the largest class: 919 at the forty-four houses of men where they are distinguished, and 413 at the twenty-six houses of women. Along with the hinds the dairywomen, some seventy in all, must go. These last, as is to be expected, come chiefly from the houses of men. In the case of the nunneries, they are concealed in the general class of * women servants'. When all these categories have been subtracted we arrive at last at the domestic staff, those who in one way or another kept the establishment running for the benefit of the professional inmates, whether as chaplains (for the nuns), or as salaried servants of the superior grades who as 'gentlemen' or 'yeomen' waited upon the community and its head in a semi-ceremonial capacity, or in the lower ranks of church-cleaners, grooms, cooks, bakers, brewers, barbers, porters and infirmary servants. This miscellaneous group, which included a few very responsible officials such as surveyors and under-stewards, totals some 330 for the forty-four houses of men and 144 for the twenty-six nunneries concerned.1 As there were roughly 200 male religious and 274 nuns in the houses concerned the final ratio of employers to domestics is a little over 1: I*I for men and (if priests are not counted) a little over 1:0*4 f° r women. This may probably serve as an overall average for small and medium-sized houses throughout the country, but whereas for the nuns the average figure for all districts is also, within very narrow limits of difference, the average figure for every component group, the figures for the houses of men vary greatly from district to district. Thus in the Midlands and Sussex the ratio is almost exactly 1:1 between religious and servants, in Wiltshire and Hampshire it is as low as 1 :o*7 and in Norfolk as high as 1:2*5. This last figure is perhaps partly to be explained by the very small numbers of religious at many East Anglian houses; these, when the needs of hospitality and of fair-sized churches and buildings had to be met, could not easily be accompanied by a correspondingly reduced staff. It is perhaps 1 These are the houses for which detailed information of the categories of servants is available.

worth noting that at the medium-sized Butley, which is in East Anglia and where we happen to have full details of the establishment from the domestic chronicler, the staff comes fairly near the Norfolk ratio of i: 2. On the whole, however, the average figure of 1:1 is probably valid for the whole country. We must not, however, forget that this census was taken at a moment when the number of religious had fallen considerably owing to the discharge of the youngest age-group by the commissioners of 1535 and the paralysis of recruitment for some years. This decrease was probably one of 10 per cent at least and if allowance is made for it, would bring the number of male religious at the very least to a parity with the number of servants. True, these figures are almost all taken from the lesser monasteries, and it was at the larger houses that redundancy was most noticeable, or at least most noticed, but there is no reason to suppose that the ratio was very different even in the great abbeys. The bursar of Durham, who handled all but £200 or so of the annual income (£1600) of the priory in 1531-2, had less than sixty servants on his pay-roll, and while some of these were employed outside the house, at Bearpark and elsewhere, very few were personal or merely domestic servants.1 The great majority were engaged in operating or servicing the offices of the priory, such as the bakery, brewery, storehouses, furnaces and the rest. Save only when he lay in the infirmary, a monk of the cloister, even in the sixteenth century, would seem to have received no routine personal service or attendance from a dependant so long as he remained within the monastery. There is no evidence, for example, that the service received in many modern religious houses either from paid servants or from lay brothers, such as the sweeping of cloisters, making of beds, cleaning of footwear, fuelling offires,and the rest, were ever received by the medieval monks unless they were superiors or major officials, who disposed of all-purpose attendants.2 Indeed, the one and only considerable group of largely otiose and merely ornamental attendants was that which formed the corps waiting upon the abbot or prior. Even here, some of these no doubt assisted in dealing with guests who would otherwise have needed attention from other members of the staff; but the large and separate household, and the state kept by at least some of the greater abbots and cathedral priors, undoubtedly led to an unnecessary multiplication of functionaries, and there is very little to be said for the ten yeomen and twenty-odd servants who were regularly employed by Prior More of Worcester as staff for his manors and as companions on his journeys. The foregoing pages have not been written to suggest that there was no waste or redundancy in the monastic staff, such as there tends to be in the 1 Durham Household Book, 92-9. 2 In the Durham list is a claustrarius, drawing the minimum wage of 3s. 4J. per annum, as compared with the fireman's 6s. Sd. and the carter's 20s. It is not clear what his functions were; possibly those of door-keeper.

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establishments of all long-lived bodies. The visitation records, as well as the critics of the monks, show glimpses of houses dominated by one or more of the functionaries, or where the servants kept the monks in their place and took their ease in the monastic offices with all the assurance of householders. The evidence suggests, however, that the cause of any waste was not primarily luxury or display, but careless or slovenly administration, and while we may certainly think that economies could have been made, as always in large households when labour and service are plentiful and cheap, and though there may have been some justification in the current judgment that * abbey lubbers' were the laziest of servants, there is no reason to suppose that a plethora of servants was a major cause of financial embarrassment, still less that the dissolution of the monasteries caused a crisis of unemployment and a race of sturdy beggars. When all those employed on the land, and all those re-employed by newly erected chapters, by ex-superiors and by the grantees of abbey lands, are deducted from the total, the remainder of men and women thrown out of employment cannot have exceeded if indeed it ever attained the numbers of the religious. We may say this, and yet be allowed to think that a monastic house may well set itself the ideal of dispensing with the ministrations of any paid servants. The Valor Ecclesiasticus might also be expected to provide a clear answer on another matter that has long been controversial, namely, the extent of the charitable activities of the monks. Apologists in the past up to and including Dom Gasquet made much of these, principally as a means of showing what evils of pauperization followed in the wake of the Dissolution. More recently, it has been the fashion to minimize the charity of the religious almost to vanishing point. In the Valor^ as has been said, expenses on charity which were in one way or another * compulsory', as forming a condition of the reception of a gift or legacy, were, if duly certified by the commissioners, allowable as tax-free income. Savine, working his way through the figures in the Valor^ was able to show that at two hundred monasteries, with an aggregate income amounting to more than half of the total monastic revenue, the average allowable expense on 'charity* was about 3 per cent of the income, while at more than a hundred other houses no alms at all free of the tenth were discoverable.1 From these figures a number of scholars have argued that the total monastic expense on charity was considerably less than 3 per cent of the monastic income—a proportion which all would agree to be remarkably small, if not totally inadequate. Savine, indeed, loyally went on to point out that the commissioners, like other tax-collectors, were often both inconsistent and grasping; he added also that many bona fide eleemosynary expenses were technically inadmissible, while others would leave little or no trace in the accounts, but these reservations were not 1 Savine, 238-9.

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always noticed by those who took all their facts at second hand. It will therefore not be out of place to dwell for a moment on the point. In the first place, Savine certainly did not overstate the inconsistencies and stringencies of the commissioners of the tenth. It may well be that the bona fide legal obligations of the monasteries were very considerably greater—perhaps as much as 50 per cent greater—than the allowances of the Valor. Next, there is good evidence, in addition to arguments of probability, to show that the sums spent on charity, even if not technically allowable, were considerably in excess of Savine's percentage. The commissioners of 1536 who dealt with the lesser houses recorded, for example, some ninety-seven children in their list of forty-seven houses of men with a population of three hundred religious. Some of these may have been in song schools, and therefore to a certain extent an asset to the house, but the monasteries concerned were small, and song schools were not common in small houses; most of these boys were probably maintained in small grammar schools founded either by the religious or one of their benefactors, and administered or at least patronized by the house. While the old myth of the Tudor monks as a great educational force has been rightly exploded, the real if unspectacular service of the monasteries in providing free education must not be forgotten. Similarly, hospitals and almshouses, for women as well as for men, were not unknown, as at Durham.2 Then, there were the daily day-to-day gifts and doles of broken meats, used clothing, and the like. It had always been a monastic tradition that food left from the monks' table should go to the poor.3 In the days of strict observance and sparing administration, when each monk was given a fixed modest portion, this custom would not have implied waste and might even have encouraged self-denial; if a monk did not fully consume his ration of bread, he knew it would go to the poor. In later ages, with large households of guests and servants, there must have been much waste and pilfering of food, and very little thrift, but even so, considerable quantities of the basic foodstuffs must have filtered down to the poor of the neighbourhood, who would have fared no better without it, whatever we may think of indiscriminate relief. Finally, there was the uncovenanted largesse of the abbot and major officials. The Journal of Prior More and some of the Durham accounts show that this was by no means negligible in quantity. Prior More, in the course of his priorate, not only bestowed moderate sums in private alms 1 Ibid. 240: 'It is impossible, from the Valor Ecclesiasticus, to judge of the voluntarycharitable expenses of the monks. . . these may be very considerable and may equal or even exceed the alms free of tax.' 2 Thus, e.g., Durham was responsible for three hospitals, at Witton, St Mary Magdalen's, and one within the precinct. For the activities of a monastic almoner in the fifteenth century, v. the introduction by Professor C. N. L. Brooke to The Book of William Morton. 3 Cf. Lanfranc's Monastic Constitutions, 89. V. ibid. 131, for another practice that presumably continued to the Reformation, viz. the bestowal on the poor of a dead monk's full portion of food and drink for one month after his death.

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to friars and to the victims of calamity,1 but spent a much greater sum on gifts of plate and vestments to village churches. We can scarcely doubt that still more wealthy prelates, such as Islip or Bere, would have made similar and still more valuable gifts. Haphazard as many of these sources of charity may have been, and socially undesirable as they may seem to minds of our day, they must be allowed to swell the monks' account when percentages of income are being reckoned. Taken altogether they would certainly double and perhaps even treble the sums allowed by the commissioners, and thus would bring the total to something very near the tenth part traditionally apportioned to charity. But, indeed, much alike of the criticism and the defence of the religious in this matter is beside the real point. The true weakness of the Church in England in the later Middle Ages was not a failure to contribute a sufficiency of funds to poor relief, but a failure to provide scope, by means of organized bodies, to the kind of charitable service given in the modern world by so many of the teaching and nursing and missionary institutes of religious men and women of the type familiar in the Sisters of Charity, Little Sisters of the Poor, nuns of the Good Shepherd, Christian Brothers, and the like. Several such bodies appeared in Italy and South Germany in the fifteenth century, but neither their influence nor their example spread to England. The monasteries have been accused of multiplying yet another class of parasites, the corrodians. A corrody was an allowance either of food and other necessaries, or of lodging, or of money, or a combination of several of these, granted or allowed to lay folk out of the monastic establishment for the closing years of their lives.* There were three principal classes of corrodians: first, an ex-superior of the house or (at a few of the larger houses) a distinguished ex-official; next, superannuated servants or dependants quartered or billeted on the monastery by those entitled to the privilege (e.g. the king, the founder, or the bishop of the diocese in the case of nuns); and thirdly, those granted a corrody by charter of the community. These last were of more than one kind: the religious might by this means make a small return to a benefactor who had given all his property to the house, or they might give security of livelihood to aged persons in return for a moderate cash payment. This last class was clearly of dubious religious significance. Towards the end of the medieval centuries, indeed, a corrody had become in effect a life annuity purchasable on terms which varied according to expectation of life or the need on the part of the monastery for ready cash. In the latter case, a corrody to an improvident superior might, like an entry fine, be a mortgage on the future which his successors would deplore. Corrodians figure largely 1 A year (1520) taken at random shows More as distributing about £ 1 on casual alms. 2 The locus classicus on corrodies is A. Hamilton Thompson,' A Corrody from Leicester Abbey, A.D. 1393—4, with some notes on corrodies', in Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society, xiv. Savine, 240-5, has some pages on the subject.

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in the visitation records of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. 'Pensioners never die', and the burden that corrodians imposed no doubt often seemed heavier than it was in reality, though it is relatively easy to produce instances of a small house all but reduced to beggary by having to support a quondam and two or three corrodians. Nevertheless, the number of corrodians in existence just before the Dissolution was very small. In the forty-seven houses of men already mentioned, with a population of three hundred religious, only twenty-nine corrodians were noted, or less than one to every ten religious. A number such as this could never have been a major factor in the economy of the monasteries as a class, however hardly a small group of beneficiaries might have borne upon an individual monastery.

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CHAPTER XXII

THE VISITATION OF 1535-6 I. THE VISITORS, THEIR AIMS AND PROCEDURE

The movement of events in these crucial years was so rapid and varied, and Cromwell, under the king, was putting into motion and steering so many projects at once, that it is difficult for the historian to keep them all separately before his mind, and it is often quite impossible for him to be certain why this one went forward swiftly, while another was delayed or abandoned. He is as one watching the passage of heavy traffic on a busy road half hidden by trees; now one vehicle is leading, now another, while a third has halted for some reason out of sight, or has turned down a sideroad. As has been seen, all the machinery was ready to be set in motion for a visitation of the monasteries early in January 1535, but it was seven months before the brake was released. Though we are not explicitly given the reason for this delay, it would seem all but certain that the visitors were held back in order to give a clear road to the commissioners for the tenth. The two enquiries could not well have been conducted simultaneously, and of the two the financial survey clearly demanded priority. As we have noted,1 it was concluded for all practical purposes in the early summer, but the late spring had been a peculiarly busy time for Cromwell, with the examinations and trials of the Carthusians, Fisher and More on his hands, and he delayed for some weeks before giving the signal for the visitation to begin. Meanwhile, the enquiry issuing in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, coming as it did as a climax to many rumours of suppression and of new taxes, could hardly fail to cause the most lively feelings of uneasiness in the monasteries. Far-sighted superiors had read the signs of the times, and had acted accordingly; sheep and stock, the liquid capital that could be realized with the least difficulty, had begun to vanish from the downs and commons, and a process of leasing out lands on a heavy fine for a long term, and of selling or hiding plate and precious stones, had already set in. The exacting task which Cromwell had set himself, t o ' remember all the jewels of all the monasteries in England *,3 would soon have a purely antiquarian interest. Speed was clearly essential. This was realized by the most energetic of his agents, Richard Layton, who repeatedly urged the minister to act. On 4 June he had forestalled possible rivals with a request for a commission for himself and Dr Legh to visit the northern parts.3 Both of them, he I V. supra, p. 243. 2 LP, VIII, 475. 3 Ibid, 822 ( = Wright, SLf lxxvi, wrongly assigned by editor to 1537), where Layton begins his letter: 'Whereas ye intende shortly to visite, and belyke shall have many sutters unto you for the same to be your commissares', etc.

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says, 'have acquaintances within ten or twelve miles of every religious house in the North', and * friends and kinsfolk* everywhere. He reminds Cromwell that he already has by him a set of articles of enquiry prepared by the writer many months previously. This letter was followed up by another proposing that Legh should deal with Lincolnshire and the diocese of Chester, while Layton went to York. 'If you defer the visitation*, he warns Cromwell,' till you have leisure, I am in great doubt when the day will come.5 His compatriots need not expect favouritism. 'There can be no better way', he remarks, 'to beat the King's authority into the heads of the rude people of the North than to show them that the King intends reformation and correction of religion. They are more superstitious than virtuous, long accustomed to frantic fantasies and ceremonies, which they regard more than either God or their prince, right far alienate from true religion. The book of articles [i.e. the questionnaire for visitation] is clear written in the custody of Bartlett your clerk.' And he adds: 'You will never know what I can do till you try me.'1 Matters in the North, indeed, had been somewhat complicated by the activities of Edward Lee, who since the last autumn had been making a visitation that was not only his primary, but the first to be made since the days of Bainbridge or before. This was finally superseded by the announcement that the visitor-general would be at York in mid-September.2 Silence then falls again on the records, to be broken only when the visitors are already at work. At the end of July the king was hunting on the borders of Gloucester and Hereford, and was at Winchcombe on the 24th of that month. A few days later Cromwell also was staying at Winchcombe, with which house he had an unspecified connection, while at Cirencester, not far away across the Cotswolds, Layton completed his visitation of the abbey at midnight on the 28th.3 Thenceforward the visitors were on the road for exactly six months. Their activities fall naturally into two phases, divided by the progress of Layton and Legh across Trent at Christmastide. Before following them on their tour it will be well to enquire as to the aim of their inquest. The older historians assumed that it was a bona fide attempt at reformation, and this view has not been without its exponents more recently. On the whole, however, what is almost a consensus of opinion has been reached on the view that partial suppression had already been decided upon, and that the visitors were expected to find abundant grounds for this. Yet even this may be to attribute to Cromwell and the king a strategic deliberation for which no evidence is forthcoming. In this matter, as on other occasions, Cromwell showed himself as the master-politician, who could seize the moment to make a decision of far-reaching consequence, and who based his actions on motives of expediency, not of 1 Ibid. 955. No date is given, but there is a reference to Lammas (1 August) as still some distance of time away. 2 Ibid. 965 (1 July). 3 Ibid. 1127.

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principle or of statesmanship. There is no clear evidence that either minister or king had decided upon total or even partial suppression before the visitation began, whereas there is some slight indication that a drastic reform was intended. Very soon, however, the temper of the visitors and the reports of their findings led to a crystallization of policy. The primary aim now was to extract damaging confessions, to open the door of dispensation as wide as might be, and to interpret the injunctions literally so as to increase the feeling of dependence upon Cromwell. It was only after an interval that the alternative of surrender, rather than the acceptance of the injunctions in all their literal force, was used as an instrument of suppression. Thus from a tentative start the procedure gradually stiffened into a method well calculated to achieve the end that had at length come to be clearly envisaged; that Cromwell himself had desired it from the beginning is probable, but cannot be proved. Cromwell's visitors, who received a handsome testimonial from Froude, have come in for a great many hard words from historians, antiquarians, and writers of romances of the last two generations.1 It is, however, a mistake to regard them as a group of unusually odious and brutal persecutors and informers of the family of Titus Oates. The five or six agents most active in the business were all men of intelligence who made for themselves careers of some distinction and considerable profit quite apart from their connection with the monasteries. They were in fact, as a group, neither worse nor better than the agents of the government of every degree from the Chancellors Audley and Rich downwards: adulatory, pliant, time-serving, they were wholly materialistic in outlook, and ready to accuse or ruin any man, friend or foe, stranger or relative, in order to retain the favour of Henry or Cromwell, but they were often sagacious, moderate and good-natured in their personal dealings when neither career nor cash was at stake. All were either canonists, civilians or common lawyers, and were used, after the fashion of Henry's servants, for every kind of business, administrative, judicial and diplomatic. Among them, priests and laymen were in almost equal numbers. Richard Layton,2 the most energetic and resourceful of them all, was 1 Froude remarked of Legh and Layton {History of England, n, 438), 'that they were young impetuous men [Layton was about 38, Legh perhaps under 35], likely to execute their work thoroughly rather than delicately, but, to judge by the surviving evidence, they were as upright and plain-dealing as they were assuredly able and efficient*. Canon Dixon and Dom Gasquet led a reaction from this, and the subsequent abuse in the articles of local antiquaries often bordered on the hysterical. Catholic apologists, in their defence of the monks, seemed on occasion to forget, or to slur over, the priesthood of Layton and London and Bedyll. Baskerville, EM, 123 seqq., while ostensibly deprecating rehabilitation ('a vast amount of abuse has been levelled a t . . .his agents a great deal of which is justified'), endeavours in fact to elude an adverse moral judgment by likening the visitors to types of men in the modern world unpopular by reason of their minor social defects. Thus Layton 'was a clergyman of that detestable type, the "man's man"' and Legh is pictured as 'a clever and conceited young don', thus disarming the censorious. 2 Summary biographies of Layton, Legh, London, Ap Rice, Tregonwell and Bedyll are in DNB', that of Ap Rice in particular requires correction.

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a Cumberland man of good family, kinsman to Robert Aske and Cuthbert Tunstall. A D.C.L. of Cambridge, he had been a colleague of Cromwell in Wolsey's service and as early as 1522, when he was perhaps rising twenty-five, had a foot on the ladder of preferment; by 1534, besides a number of benefices and sinecures, he was a clerk in chancery and clerk to the privy council. He was used to bring Syon into compliance, and to interrogate Fisher and More. After his success as a visitor he was one of the commission to try the northern insurgents in 1536—7, and had previously taken part in the trial of Anne Boleyn. From 1537 he held the rich rectory of Harrow-on-the-Hill, from 1538 he was master in chancery and from 1539 dean of York. His last mission was as ambassador to Brussels in 1543, and he died there a year later, probably before attaining his fiftieth year. Lay ton's lack of principle is shown with sufficient clarity by the haste with which he revised his sincere and favourable judgment on Abbot Whiting when Cromwell hinted at a faux pas,1 as also by the language in which he invited the vicar-general to Harrow as a guest more welcome than ever Christ had been at Bethany.2 His reckless and wholesale charges against monastic communities, together with his inquisitorial methods and salacious anecdotes, show well enough his own moral outlook. He was, however, active and enterprising, with a gift for swift action, as may be seen in his exploits with the poleaxe at Langdon and in the speed and obvious gusto with which he took charge when fire broke out at Canterbury. His letters, with their racy phrasing and unfailing verve, stand out from all others in the great collection of Cromwell's correspondence and can scarcely have failed to provide welcome relief in the midst of the minister's heavy and often distressingly arid mail; many of their phrases, indeed, almost all of them defamatory, linger obstinately in the memory and, like the sallies of Charles II or John Wilkes, do much to win for their author an indulgence which his character does little to deserve. His vignettes of the abbot's lodging at Langdon, 'evyn lyke a cony clapper fulle of startyng hoilles', where the only vocal response to his knocking was ' thabbottes litle doge that within his dore faste lokked beyede and barkede';3 of his posse of 'iiij monks with bandoggs to kepe the Shryne' of St Thomas at Canterbury and other * monks in everie qwarter of the Churche with candills' ; 4 of' one Mr Grenefelde, a gentilman of Bukynghamshire', gathering up folios of the evicted Scotus in the windy * quadrant court' of New College, Oxford, 'to make hym sewelles or blawnsherres [i.e. searing-sheets] to kepe the dere within the woode, therby to have the better cry with his howndes' ;5 of the abbot of Bisham, 1 Ellis, OL, ill, 3, ccclii (16 September 1539); v. infra, p. 380. 2 Ibid. no. cdxxx: 'Simeon was never so glade to se Chryst his master, as I shalbe to se your Lordeshipe in this your owne house, and all that ever shalbe in hit for my lyffe.' 3 LP, ix, 668 (23 October); Wright, SLt xxxiii. 4 LPy ix, 669. 5 Ibid. 350 (12 September); Wright, SL, xxx. Is Layton's 'quadrant court' the nearest a Cambridge man could get to 'quadrangle'?

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$i-devant of Chertsey, selling his house's goods 'for white wyne, sugar, burage leves and seke [sack] wherof he sippes nyghtly in his chamber tyll mydnight';1—these, and many other passages, deserve on grounds of style a place in any selection of English letters. When Layton dashed off his vivacious missives, he could not forseee that they were to be a principal document in the brief-case of prosecuting counsel at the trial of the monks in centuries to come, but in fact they have had an influence on the subconscious mind of historians greater, perhaps, than that of the comperta, and they have undoubtedly done much to corroborate the latter in many minds. We shall never know the precise proportions of fact and hen trovato in them; each reader must make the judgment for himself, remembering that they were written without a thought of their survival and that common experience belies any assumption that the most vivid version of an episode is also the most reliable. The present writer, after very prolonged reflection, bearing in mind Layton's evident impurity of mind and confessed desire to please, would hesitate to give full credence to any accusation of his, however plausible or amusing it might be. Thomas Legh, his principal colleague, was a Cheshire man with connections in Cumberland, and probably a distant cousin of Rowland Lee, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. If a probable identification is acceptedf he was an alumnus of the sister foundations of Eton and King's College, Cambridge, and 'of a very bulky and gross habit of body'. Though still comparatively young at the time of the visitations, he had proceeded D.C.L. in 1531, had been used as ambassador to Denmark in 1532, and had been employed in various ways at home and abroad where he would have heard at first hand of the results of the suppression of religious houses. A humourless, overbearing man, colder but more incisive of mind than Layton, conceited in behaviour and sharp to brutality in manner, he was an unsympathetic character, disliked by both Norfolk and Chapuys. Together with Layton, he became bete noire to the northern insurgents and was subsequently used in their trials; he emerged from the whole episode the better for the lands of Calder and Nostell. Like Layton, he helped to bring Anne Boleyn to the block and later shared in bringing Dr London to book for his share in the Prebendaries' plot. He was knighted in 1544, and died soon afterwards. The two principal visitors that remain were more substantial men who brought their careers in the world to a more successful conclusion. John ap Rice or Price, scion of an ancient Welsh family, was reared at the Inns of Court and became a notary public. He was in Cromwell's service by 1532, when he searched Tunstall's house at Auckland; by 1534 he was registrar of Salisbury and took part in the examination of the Carthusians, Fisher and More. Besides his work in the visitation and suppression of monasteries he took an important part in drafting the statutes by which the 1 LP,

XIII, i, 1239.

2 The Cheshire Sheaf, 3 ser.vol.iv p. 13.

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administration of Wales was assimilated to that of England; his activities for the government were requited by his acquisition of Carmarthen and Brecon priories. He was knighted in 1547 and in 15 51 was on the Council of the Marches. Settling himself down in the monastic buildings at Brecon he founded a county family, collected an admirable library, and wrote a number of solid works on English and Welsh history, besides dedicating a book on coinage to Queen Mary. He has acquired a posthumous and spurious title to a niche in literary history as the reputed patron of Sir Hugh Evans, whom he (despite difficulties of date) was said to have drawn into Shakespeare's orbit.1 His descendant, Colonel Price, was a royalist of note at a time when loyalty to the monarch entailed sacrifices as real as the advantages it had brought to his ancestor. Ap Rice was a shrewd, critical man, prejudiced against the religious, who appears to have carried through in East Anglia the programme outlined by Layton for the North. John Tregonwell was perhaps the most notable figure among the visitors. He was by birth a Cornishman, and like Price he was a layman. After proceeding D.C.L. at Oxford in 1522 he became Principal of Vine Hall (Peckwater Inn). Sworn of the Council in 1532, he was king's proctor in the divorce suit and on diplomatic missions in the Netherlands and in Scotland. His talents, like those of Layton and Ap Rice, were used at the trials of the Carthusians, Fisher and More, and later at that of Anne Boleyn. In 1535 he was a principal judge in the court of admiralty. In the sequel, he filled many lucrative posts and secured a fair prize from the monastic spoils which he continued to hold as Member of Parliament under Queen Mary, who knighted him in 1553. Like Ap Rice, he founded a family on a monastic estate, and added a tomb to what is now one of the most exquisite monuments of the monastic past, where green lawns and ancient timber make more beautiful the church of Milton Abbas. Tregonwell, though acquisitive and in sympathy with the new world, was the most independent of the visitors, and did not hesitate to plead the cause of a house which in his eyes seemed deserving.2 In addition to these four principals, others were employed, such as John Vaughan and Ellis Price in Wales, of whom little trace remains in the Cromwell papers. In England the only other name to appear at all frequently is that of Thomas Bedyll, whom we have met earlier in these pages. Bedyll would seem to have stood a degree lower in the social scale than those previously mentioned. He was a New College man, and proceeded B.C.L. in 1508, rising no higher on the academic ladder. From 1520 to 1532 he was secretary to Archbishop Warham, but the archbishop, when testifying to his 'approved fidelity and virtueJ3 was either using a 1 The art. in DNB is ambiguous here and the date (1573) given for Ap Rice's death is probably too late. 2 There are some excellent pages on Tregonwell and his career in A. L. Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, 187-93.

3 V. art. in DNB.

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set of conventional terms or had mistaken Bedyll's industry and submissive manner for something more admirable. Bedyll, indeed, though not actively malicious or brutal, is one of the least attractive of Cromwell's minions. He was counsel for the king in the divorce suit, and employed both in interrogating Fisher and More and in extracting the oath of Supremacy from the Charterhouse and Syon. A clerk to the Council in 1532, he turns up repeatedly in examinations and state trials and odd jobs of inspection, in all of which his coarse texture of mind and snuffling accents show to peculiar disadvantage against the foil of hard decisions and physical suffering accepted and endured by his victims; the most obsequious of men, he was quite untouched by finer issues.1 Bedyll became a pluralist on a considerable scale, but his early death in 1537 prevented his attaining preferment higher than the archdeaconry of London. Such were the varied careers of some of Cromwell's visitors; men distinguished in no way from a hundred others in the public life of the age; grasping, worldly and without a trace of spiritual feeling. They were to be, all unconsciously, principal agents in the most sudden and wholesale transformation that English social life has ever undergone between the Norman Conquest and our own day. As they rode over the rainswept English countryside in the late summer of 1535 the life of some eight hundred religious families, great and small, was continuing, at least in external show, to follow the rhythm that had endured for centuries and that had been familiar to Englishmen from the very dawn of national history. From the grey turrets and lichened gables, set among the red roofs of a town or framed by the ricks and elms of the open country, bells still rang to Mattins and Mass, and the habits, white or black, still crossed the great courtyard or passed down the village street. When, five years later, their work was done, nettles and the fire-weed were springing from the dust, and the ruins of Hailes and Roche and Jervaulx were already beginning to wear the mantle of silence that covers them to-day. The visitors carried with them two documents, a list of'instructions', which was in fact a long questionnaire to be administered to each of the religious, and a set of injunctions to be issued at the end of the visitation.2 As these have been interpreted by historians in various senses, it may be well to examine them more closely. The questionnaire differed little, if at all, from those which had been in use by ordinaries for centuries, save that it was, so to say, an 'omnibus5 containing a section applicable to women only, and using in the case of men terms which could be applied as easily to regular canons as to monks. It covered the whole range of duties of the religious life, as well as containing a very full section dealing with the superior and his administra1 Bedyll's methods and sentiments at Charterhouse and Syon have been noted above, pp. 219, 232. His letters are almost universally repellent. 2 They are in Wilkins, Concilia, in, 786-91.

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tion. There was no emphasis on sexual faults, and no trace of encouragement for the inquisitorial methods which were in fact employed. Reasonably administered, it could have proved as efficient an instrument as any of its predecessors had been in the hands of a bishop. The injunctions, on the other hand, had the familiar 'new look'. 1 They began by reminding the abbot and community of the two oaths they had recently taken in respect of the Acts of Succession and Supremacy, and the first injunction laid down that' the abbot... shall faithfully, truly and heartily keep and observe, and cause, teach and procure to be kept* all the laws and instructions relating to these two great issues, and that superiors ' shall observe and fulfil by all the means that they best may, the statutes of the realm made or to be made for the suppression and taking away of the usurped and pretended jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome within this realm*. This let the religious know where they stood clearly enough, but it was no more than the logical consequence of the oaths that they had taken; they might dislike it or regret it, but they could not complain that they had been taken unawares. The injunctions dealing with the daily life of the house were on the whole neither novel nor remarkably severe, and most of them were either repetitions of traditional legislation or were at least similar to earlier episcopal injunctions. As with all such reassertions of generally admitted principles, everything would depend on the degree of urgency and rigidity with which they were enforced. Two classes of injunction, however, call for remark: those which, without being novel, were, or at least could be interpreted as being, severe, and those which in one way or another were new. In the first class was a short article 'that no monk or brother of this monastery by any means go forth of the precincts of the same*. This, as a general law, has always been, as it still is, traditional in all monastic orders. In itself, however, as here enunciated, it was ambiguous. Was it a regulation binding all under all circumstances, or was it simply a general principle admitting of exceptions sanctioned by necessity, custom and dispensation? Did the term monk include lawfully appointed obedientiaries, with estates to manage? Did it even include the abbot himself, who had always, from the very origins of monasticism, enjoyed a reasonable freedom in this respect? Or did it merely assert a general principle for 'monks of the cloister* and others when not engaged in official work? If the last, it was traditional; if the former, it would not only create an administrative crisis, but would in effect deprive the house of autonomy. A monastery in which an abbot could not give either his monks or himself permission, under certain circumstances, to leave the precinct, would have been in practice quite unworkable, unless a higher superior were to take 1 G. G. Coulton, at the end of two chapters (LVIII and LIX) in vol. iv of Five Centuries of Religion, observes (p. 661): *Thus, apart from the question of Royal supremacy, which was a chose jugde, it is difficult to find anything in Cromwell's injunctions which St Louis might not have decreed, and Innocent III approved.' Judicet lector.

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the abbot's place in all respects as a giver of dispensations. No analogy can reasonably be drawn between a Tudor monastery, or even a medieval monastery of the strictest observance, and a fully enclosed house of women. It would therefore seem antecedently probable that the framer of this injunction had no intention of revolutionary innovation; had he so intended, he would have inserted * abbot* or 'master* before the word *monk\ Nevertheless, as we shall see, the issue was raised as a practical one almost immediately by the visitors. This article was followed by one enacting ' that women... be utterly excluded', and it was doubtless intended that a similar prohibition should apply to men in nunneries. This again, though strong in emphasis, was no novelty and in itself most salutary, but again the phrasing was ambiguous. Did it bind semper et ubique, or were such traditional exceptions as distinguished ladies and near relations to be excluded from the abbot's board and the guests' dining-hall? Here again, a legal exegesis, with tradition behind it, would have favoured the broader interpretation. In addition to these articles, which, though probably intended simply to reassert firmly what was already law, were in fact ambiguous and disquieting, there were four or five which were a direct consequence of the New Learning, and one which reflected clearly the new organization of the Church in England. Of the former class the first was an injunction that every day, for the space of one hour, a lesson of Holy Scripture was to be read to the brethren. By this, doubtless, a commentary on the New Testament, of the type of Colet's on St Paul, was intended. So far as words went, this was little more than a development of the lecture on divinity, more than two centuries old, and we have seen how at Winchcombe Richard Kidderminster had given new life to a traditional practice. But the emphasis on the Scripture, as against divinity or the fathers, was a sign of the times; it was intended to encourage a new spiritual outlook, and could scarcely help but breed controversy as the world then was. Still more novel was the next article, a long disquisition in the Erasmian manner on the unprofitable nature of ceremonies, that is, of the traditional monastic observances of offices, processions, fasts, penances, and the rest. The brethren were to be instructed that these of themselves were not pleasing to God, but merely remote preparations for the interior and spiritual service of Christ. The long article was phrased moderately, and would have been theologically unexceptionable if delivered in private, with due reservations, by a novice-master. Given, however, as a solemn injunction, it was clearly directed against what was assumed to be a common abuse and an undesirable frame of mind, and it could not but give to a master, and still more to a novice, addicted to the new learning, a platform from which to criticize and ridicule the traditional framework of monastic life, of the Rule itself, and of religious obedience. A further article was still more revolutionary. This was a command, again based on

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Erasmian teaching, that no one under twenty-four years of age must be professed. This, in practice, was made retrospective by the visitors who held plenary powers under the vicar-general, and could therefore claim the right to dispense from monastic vows. There followed an article against superstition, another bogey of Erasmus. Relics were not to be exhibited for 'increase of lucre', and if visitors or pilgrims wished to make a donation at a shrine, the money was to go to the poor. A less important, but significant, command laid on priests the obligation each day of remembering Queen Anne in their Mass. Finally, there was an article, entirely without precedent, that if the superior, or any subject of the house, should infringe any of the injunctions, any other member might denounce him at once to the king or his visitor-general or his deputy, and the abbot was to provide him with money and all facilities for his journey to headquarters. The document ended with the statement that the visitors had power to add to these injunctions in accordance with their comperta and the needs of individual houses. There has been in recent years some discussion as to the motive behind these regulations. As it would not be realistic to attribute to Cromwell an ardent pastoral concern for the spiritual welfare of the religious, our task is merely to decide whether the injunctions were intended as a sharp but practical disciplinary measure, or as a reductio adimpossibile for the monks: a demand for a severity of observance which would drive them either to a petition for release or to a disobedience which could be punished by suppression. It has indeed been argued that the injunctions were no more than reasonable deductions from the first principles of monasticism, and that the monks by their protests subscribed to all the charges of laxity that had been made against them.1 Some of the injunctions, no doubt, were of this type, but to apply this line of thought to the regulation confining even superiors to unbroken residence within the gates is surely a serious failure of both practical and spiritual understanding. Such a regulation had never been the law or practice in the monastic or canonical order from the days of St Benedict to those of Cromwell, and, though unquestionably the abuse of freedom on the part of abbots and obedientiaries had been a principal cause of decline and scandal for centuries, the imposition of a rigid, universal prohibition would have rendered the administration of estates and courts an impossibility, and would have deprived the religious at a stroke of all opportunity for recreation which was probably desirable in itself and which in any case had a prescriptive claim of several centuries' validity throughout Europe. Even the Carthusians in country districts were allowed on occasion to walk outside their precinct. The long-needed reform on this point should have taken 1 Coulton, op. cit. 633, even puts the rhetorical question: 'Must we not recognize that his [i.e. Henry VIII's] initial move would have put him high among Popes, if not in the first place?' Baskerville, EM, 132—3, makes, by way of insinuation, a very similar suggestion.

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the shape of a considerable, even of a severe, but not of a total restriction. Regulations imposed from without are only wise when they are reasonably practical, which this was not. A spiritual rebirth is not accomplished by a set of strict rules, nor by the agency of such men as Legh and Layton. In the event, the numerous petitions from abbots and priors, sometimes supported by the visitors themselves, seem to have been favourably received by Cromwell. He knew how to make the best of every situation, and the abbots had to pay for their freedom, but such dispensations would have been scarcely logical if the injunctions had been primarily intended as a return to primitive discipline. On the other hand, the suggestion first made, or at least first firmly adopted, by Gasquet,1 that the injunctions were from the beginning aimed solely at driving the monks to desperation and capitulation, would seem to be untenable. Layton, who was as deeply engaged as anyone in the preparations for the visitation, clearly knew nothing of such a policy, for during the first weeks of his visitatorial activity he urged restraint in applying the injunctions, and gave dispensations freely.2 Moreover, the suggestion made byAp Rice at Denneyon 30 October, when the visitation was three months old, that a clearance could be effected without scandal by applying the injunctions literally, cannot be made to bear the weight of argument that Gasquet rests upon it when he suggests that the visitor was a confidential agent putting Cromwell's deepest designs into practice. The context makes it clear that the suggestion was thrown out as a postscript to a letter with the hope of hindering Legh's design of dispensing all who (as he alleged) wished to depart.3 Doubtless the alternative of keeping the Rule to the letter or of departing was proposed to the friars in 1538, almost three years later, and achieved the result that was desired, but in these years of rapid change an argument reaching back three years is of little force. There is, in fact, no evidence whatever either that the injunctions emptied the monasteries in 1535 or that they were intended to do so. What little evidence there is goes to show that the severity of the injunctions was due to the king, who always took a strict view of other people's obligations, but who quickly lost interest in the matter and left it to Cromwell to apply the injunctions as he thought fit, partly to keep the abbots duly subservient and partly to secure the advantages of a lucrative dispensation. Although what was accomplished by Cromwell's commissaries is always called a visitation, and although the facts and figures sent up to headquarters were styled comperta after the traditional fashion, the visitors were far from following the ponderous but essentially fair canonical procedure that had been in use for three centuries. According to this, after long preliminary formalities, religious and legal, the members of the community were examined singly, from the abbot downwards, on a long questionnaire. The detecta thus acquired were then controlled by a further 1 Gasquet, Henry VIIIr, 80-1. 2 V, infra, p. 281. 3 V, infra, p. 285. Ap Rice's postscript is in Ellis, OL, in, ccciv; cf. LPt ix, 708.

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examination, often very lengthy and detailed, and the specific accusations were then sifted, and all accused of serious offences were given opportunity of canonical compurgation. Finally, often after an interval of weeks or months, injunctions were issued adapted to the situation as disclosed by the comperta, which was the name given to the final shape taken by the detecta after they had been controlled and analysed.1 Cromwell's visitors acted in a more summary fashion. They did indeed carry with them a long questionnaire, but there is no evidence that they employed it in all, or indeed, in any, cases, and the religious and canonical prologues were probably altogether neglected.2 The liking displayed by Legh for a processional reception by the community, though an integral part of the episcopal visitation, was slightly ridiculous when the visitor was a young layman, and was in fact regarded as a foible even by his colleagues. As for the injunctions, these were not framed after the visitation to meet the individual case, but were carried round by the visitors, presumably on a printed broadsheet, and served on all the communities before the visitor left—only a few hours, it might be, after his arrival. So far as the comperta and the visitors' letters tell the story, it would seem that, after a few early experiments, the interrogatories were directed towards acquiring a summary statement of the financial and economic position of the house, and to eliciting from the individual religious, by means of relentless questioning of the kind which almost all the visitors concerned had been practising with state prisoners during the past year, statistics of sexual immorality and ' superstitious' practices in vogue at the house. The commissaries then dismissed, by authority of the king's vicargeneral, all religious under a certain age, and, as the visitation proceeded, dispensed from their vows others who made petition for this. They then presented the superior and community with the injunctions, took their fee, and departed. II. THE COURSE OF THE VISITATION

We can follow the visitors on their travels in so far as their letters to Cromwell, with accounts of their doings, permit. We may imagine them, if we will, riding under the louring skies and heavy foliage of an unusually wet summer.3 Layton was at Evesham on i August, and thence passed to 1 For an account of the procedure, v. ROt 1, 81-3, and authorities there cited. 2 The reader may judge for himself the justice of Baskerville's statement (EM, 130, 132) that 'it cannot be said that [Layton and Legh] did not follow precedents, both generally and in detail, or that their methods differed much from those of former visitors, except that they were more thorough-going.... The royal visitors followed the precedents of episcopal visitors down to the last detail.' 3 Early in August Stephen Vaughan had remarked upon 'these great humidities' and shortly before 12 August old Edmund Brocke, of Crowle, going home in the rain from Worcester market, opined that 'it is long of the King that this weather is so troublous and unstable. There was never good wedringes since the King began this business'. He drew the conclusion that ' it maketh no matter if he [the king] were knocked or patted on the head*. Others noted that the bad weather began when the Carthusians were executed (4 May). Cf. LP, ix, ii, 47, 74-

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Tewkesbury; a week later he was at Bath and Farley; thence he circled by way of Lacock, Witham and Bruton to Glastonbury and Bristol, where he arrived on 22 August.1 After that, he is lost to sight for more than a fortnight, reappearing on 12 September at Oxford and Abingdon, whence he proceeded to join Cromwell at Winchester three days later. On 22 September he was at Southwark, and thence by a rapid stage to Durford near the Hampshire border of Sussex (24th). In the three following days he dealt with Waverley, Shulbrede and Essebourne; on 1 October he was at Boxgrove, and the next day at Lewes. He then swept round the southeastern coast of Kent by way of Dover, Folkestone and Langdon, arriving at Christ Church, Canterbury, on 23 October. A week later he was at Rochester and Leeds, and about this time also at Bermondsey. Then he disappears again, perhaps engaged on other business, till he reappears on 12 December at Syon. Meanwhile, Legh and Ap Rice had set out from near Worcester at the beginning of August, and Legh had dealt with the cathedral priory, Great Malvern and Winchcombe. Ap Rice does not appear at these houses, but within a few days they were working in double harness at Malmesbury, and thenceforward were together for more than a month. After visiting some houses in north Wiltshire they followed on the heels of Layton at Lacock (20 August) and Bruton (23-4); this overlapping, which caused some friction, was apparently a consequence of Layton's commission as a free-lance, whereas Legh had a list of specified houses to visit. From Bruton the pair travelled into central Wiltshire, where they dealt with some of the great nunneries, and thence to Hampshire and the Thames valley, with Reading (25 September), Chertsey and Merton. Legh was then commissioned to visit some London monasteries, and both he and Ap Rice can be traced at Westminster and Holywell (28 September), but if they completed the visitation of the metropolis, it was in a matter of a fortnight or less, for by 16 October they were at Warden in Huntingdonshire, having apparently put St Albans behind them on the way. After a short circle to Royston and Walden, the pair were at Cambridge for a week or so at the end of October, where they reformed the university with commendable despatch, finding time also to visit Denney and SwarTham and the bishopric of Ely. Thence on 4 November they departed to Bury St Edmunds and to a broad sweep in the coastal parts of Norfolk, which they had traversed by 20 November, leaving some three weeks for Suffolk, where Legh can be traced at Ipswich and St Osyth. They then parted, Ap Rice to other work and Legh to join Layton a few days before Christmas at Lichfield. The fourth visitor, Tregonwell, had started work at Oxford with Layton on 12 September, Cromwell having in each case tactfully given a 1 The movements of the visitors can be followed in LP, ix, x; in addition to dated letters, indications are often given by references to future plans or past actions. V. also App. VI, infra.

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member of the sister university a share in the congenial and remarkably simple task of academic reform. While at Oxford the two commissaries completed a joint visitation of Oseney, but then they separated. Tregonwell made a rapid circuit of minor houses in Buckinghamshire, south Northamptonshire, and Oxfordshire; he then disappears from sight, en route for Thame, and does not reappear for almost a month when, early in November (4th), he is at Athelney in Somerset, passing thence to Cleeve near Watchet, and then by way of Barnstaple to Bodmin and his native Cornwall, where he disappears from the monastic scene. Simultaneously, but more slowly, two other commissioners, Adam Beconsaw and Dr J. Vaughan, were endeavouring to reform public morals, as well as the monasteries, in Wales. They can be seen on 22 August at Valle Crucis, on 14 October at Gresford, on 11 November at Llandaff, and four months later they are at Llandaff again, after dealing with Brecknock. Of this tour, however, very few details can be gleaned.1 The visitation did not pass without an occasional contretemps. As we have seen, Layton was first off the mark with a roving commission, whereas Legh and Ap Rice had their objectives fixed for them by Cromwell. Consequently, the abbot of Bruton who, after some initial unpleasantness, had succeeded in giving a fairly favourable impression to Layton, had a disagreeable shock a few days later when Legh arrived at the gate with a written commission. Some plain speaking followed, for the abbot, having already parted with a substantial fee and a venerable relic, in addition to hearing the comments of his canons on his regime, had no desire for a repetition of the experience within a fortnight. Nevertheless, he was only in part successful in avoiding it, for Legh, though refraining from a formal visitation, demanded to see Layton's comperta and proceeded to stiffen up his injunctions.2 These last, indeed, provided matter for friction on more than one occasion. As has been suggested, they were, if strictly interpreted, quite impracticable. Layton who, for all his railing and bawdy talk, could be reasonable on occasion, began by allowing heads of houses to sit lightly to them pending further instructions. Legh, on the other hand, who was by nature more rigid and self-important, enforced the rule of perpetual enclosure from the first, even for heads of houses, as also the exclusion of all laymen and women from the precinct, and as early as 20 August wrote to Cromwell urging uniformity of treatment.3 Ap Rice, who was in some ways the most thoughtful of the visitors, wrote the same day in the opposite sense, setting out with fairness the reasonable case of the superior. Many of the houses, he said, 'stand by husbandry', and they must fall to decay i£ their heads are not allowed to go out. Even the Carthusians had been forced to give their priors and procurators this permission, and it was unavoidable that a Martha should be provided to care for her contemplative 1 Beconsaw and Vaughan can be seen in glimpses at work in LP. 2 LP, ix, 159. 3 Ibid. 138; Wright, SLt xxiii.

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sisters; superiors could be chosen who had shown themselves worthy of trust in this regard.1 Legh, however, reiterated his complaints, and by the time that Cromwell had replied to his first letter by giving him power to remit the injunction he had become obstinate on the point. The other monks would be jealous, he wrote; it would be a pity to grant dispensations only a few days after the injunctions had been served on them; let the monks wait a little, and they would be ready to pay more for it.2 From what can be seen of subsequent events, this last argument appealed to Cromwell. Another quarrel broke out on the question of dispensation and dismissal. The injunctions forbade any religious profession to be made by those under the age of twenty-four, and the visitors were from the start empowered to dispense those under age who might request it. Disagreement arose, however, as to whether those under the specified age should be compulsorily dismissed, or as Legh put it 'disvested', or should merely be given the choice of going. Layton at first did not force them out and Ap Rice allowed those over twenty-two to stay, thus falling foul of Legh, who was willing to let the monks stay, but not the nuns, despite Ap Rice's argument a fortiori that * women come to maturity two years before men*. Legh also took it upon himself to grant dispensations to those of any age who might apply. Finally Cromwell decided after due reflection that none over the age of twenty was to be compelled to go.3 The differences of policy sprang from differences of personality. Relations between Legh and Ap Rice became less and less harmonious, and Legh expatiated to Cromwell on the Welshman's shortcomings. The vicar-general in return asked the latter for his views on his colleague, against whom complaints had been coming in, and Ap Rice, though * not eloquent in accusation as some men be', succeeded in giving a very adequate impression of Legh's limitations. This drew some expressions of pained surprise from the aggrieved doctor. Complaints of' my triumphant and sumptuous usage and gay apparel', he says, are misplaced. 'I used myself no otherwise than I did before, and wear no garments but such as I have worn in London these two years.' 'And as by your means I had of the king an old gown of velvet*, he adds, 'what more reasonable than to wear it?' On the very day that Legh was penning this letter at Warden, his colleague was taking up his parable again. Legh, he wrote to Cromwell, is 'very insolent and pompatique', and of a 'satrapic countenance'. He has 'handled the fathers very roughly', with the result that he has spread ' more terror than ever Dr Alen did'. In addition, he goes about in a velvet gown with a dozen men in livery besides his brother, and takes a commission of £20 whenever he presides over an election, in addition to other 1 LP, ix, 139. 2 This dispute is hard to follow, and the abstracts in LP may sometimes have obscured the details. Cf. LP, ix, 167,265,423,621,622,661; also Legh's query, ibid. 73 5 (November): 'What to be done for those who desire to be dismissed from religion?'. 3 Ibid. 423, 661.

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less regular perquisites. His custom is to refuse the normal fee and depart in a huff, to be followed immediately by an emissary from the convent with an acceptable offer.1 Legh somehow got wind of his partner's activities and gave indications of 'ruffling', whereupon Ap Rice forwarded some second thoughts to Cromwell. Legh, he said, had for his acquaintances 'many rufflers and serving-men'; he was still young and 'by nature of a high courage', and if he were admonished might still turn out well.2 A further admonition from Cromwell had in fact already reached Legh, who adopted a tone of injured innocence. 'As to my lordly countenance', he wrote, 'I have little cause so to look, for I have been sick since I left you and very ill at ease.'3 Before this sad story could have reached headquarters a second candid note came down from Cromwell, and Legh wrote again at length in reply. He is willing to abandon the velvet gown, and only wears one of fur 'light and warm.. .that Richard's wife bought for m e . . .fur and all, for £ 4 ' . As for the charge that he had a long train, he has only one old servant and his brother whom, since he had 'buried his wife of late and is not very expert in the world', he had 'willed to ride with [him] to see the countries and manners of men \ 4 Ap Rice, we may feel, was indeed justified in his apprehension that Legh, 'with bold excuse, in which he is very ready, should overcome me who have little audacity'. The quarrel blew over, but Legh was at pains to inform Cromwell of the gratifying reception which had been given to the Chancellor's injunctions to the University of Cambridge. 'They say', he writes, 'that nothing was ever better for the students, except three or four Pharisaical Pharisees', and three days later he repeats: 'they say you have done more for the advancement of learning than ever Chancellor did'.5 In the intervals of reforming the university the two commissioners found time to deal with a few neighbouring nunneries, and Legh, still anxious to get on the right side of the vicar-general, forwarded a 'supposed' love-letter of the prioress of Sopham' to make you laugh \ 6 Whatever complaints might have been made against Legh, Cromwell decided that he was an efficient agent. The tiffs and bickerings of the visitors are of interest only as a testimony of their characters. Their letters are equally revealing of their authors' designs. Here Layton, sanguine and uninhibited, is seen most clearly. His primary aim from the start is to collect as quickly as possible serious matter for the comperta, and to keep Cromwell amused by scandal. His letters abound in opprobrious phrases. His description of the abbot of Battle is well known: 'the veriest hayne, beetle and buserde, and the arentest chorle that ever I see'.7 On his return three years later he repeats 1 Ibid. 621, 622. 2 Ibid. 630. 3 Ibid. 640. 4 Ibid. 651; cf. Ellis, OL, in, ii, ccxlvii, etc. 5 LPy ix, 708; Ellis, OL, in, iii, ccciv. 6 Ibid. 7 LP, ix, 632. * Hayne *=mean wretch. ' Beetle ' = blockhead, numskull. 'Buserde's: stupid person (often with adjective 'blind'). So OED.

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* so beggary a house I never see, nor so filthy stuff... the stuff is like the persons'.1 It is only rarely that he is complimentary, as at Waverley, where the abbot is 'honest, but none of the children of Solomon', and even here he adds 'it will be expedient for you to tell the poor fool what he should do with his monks' who, it appears, had failed to make the royal visitor comfortable.2 His comment on Durford, that it had * better be called Dirtford', is typical.3 Jocosely explicit when he scents evil, Layton has a ready explanation when all seems well, as at Glastonbury: the monks are too straitly kept to offend, 'but faine they wolde if they myght, as they confesse, and so the faute is not in them'. 4 Elsewhere he has another reason; there is a conspiracy of silence. Thus at Leicester 'the abbay is confederyde, we suppose, and nothyng will confesse', though they are 'the moste obstinate and factious chanons that ever I knowe',5 His colleague, Ap Rice, who had shown himself discriminating in the west, where he had twice praised the large and aristocratic nunnery of Lacock,6 has a similar story at Bury St Edmunds. 'I firmly believe and suppose that they had confedered and compacted before our comyng that they shulde disclose nothing.' Likewise at St Albans he 'found little, although there were much to be founde', and of East Anglia in general he notes: 'at the greatest houses they are so confederate by reason of their heads being mere Pharisees that we can get little or no compertes'.7 Such conspiracy, if indeed it existed, argues a degree of self-control and loyalty in a large community such as is rarely found in those guilty of serious misconduct and the moral and psychological weaknesses which accompany it. Of all the commissioners Tregonwell is perhaps the most reliable. He does not mince his words at Eynsham, whose latter end was like its middle age, 'a raw sort of religious persons, and all kinds of offences, etiam crimen pessimum\ nor at Clattercote, where the house is 'old, foul and filthy', but he finds good to say of the nuns of Godstow and Catesby, and the canons of Ashby and other houses.8 Even Bedyll, after a handsome compliment to Ramsey, adds piously, ' I pray God I may fynd other houses in no worse condition, and than I wolbe right glad that I tok this journey '.9 A knowledge of Bedyll's character, however, and his repeated statement that the Ramsey monks are 'feythful obedienciaries' to the king as Supreme Head, make it conceivable that more material considerations had contributed to his satisfaction. Similarly Layton's resounding testimony to the respectability of Durham, though probably consistent with the facts, no doubt also bore relation to his kinship with Tunstall, 1 4 5 7 8 9

LP, XHI, i, 1085. 2 Ibid, ix, 452. 3 Ibid. 444. Ibid. 168; Wright, SL, xxiv; Archbold, SRH, p. 39. LP, ix, 1005; Wright, SL, xlii. 6 LP, ix, 139, 160. Wright, SL, xxxviii; LP, ix, 772 (Bury); 661 (St Albans); 808 (general). LP, ix, 457; Ellis, OL, in, iii, cclxvii. Wright, SL, xlvi; LPy x, 90, 103.

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1

who was his patron into the bargain. Such testimonials did not receive a warm welcome from either Cromwell or the king, as Layton was to find in the case of Abbot Whiting. Legh did better with his story of' half a dozen' nuns of Denney 'with tears in their eyes begging to be dismissed', to which the realist Ap Rice added in a postscript that 'they will all do this if they are compelled to observe these injunctions', 2 though in the event the nuns of Denney begged for, and obtained, exemption from suppression in 1536. It is possible to see changes of procedure in the course of the visitation. Legh began as a pompous martinet, but seems to have been shaken by reproofs from Cromwell. Ap Rice, on the other hand, began sympathetically but coarsened after a time. As for Layton, who began in a spirit of coarse good-humour, a sense of power seems to have awakened in him the qualities of a bully. The episode at Lewes, recounted by himself, can scarcely have been unique. There, having been assured by the prior that he knew nothing of a risky sermon delivered by the subprior, he forced the latter to admit the former's complicity, and then went through a kind of parody of the rite of excommunication in the chapter-house: I have declared the prior to be perjured [he writes to Cromwell], per haec verba. Auctoritate Dei Patris Omnipotends, et Regia Auctoritate^ et auctoritate Magistri Thomae Cromwel, cujus qfficii in hac pane fungor, te priorem, &c.^ pronuncio perjurum. That done, I laid unto him concealment of treason, called him heinous traitor in the worst names I could devise, he all the time kneeling and making intercession unto me not to utter to you the premises for his undoing.3 It is usually assumed, explicitly or tacitly, both by historians and (in consequence) by their readers, that the four visitors whose activities we have followed were the only commissioners at work, and that consequendy the houses which they did not visit were left undisturbed. An exception, as we have seen, is clearly to be made for Wales, where Adam Beconsaw and John Vaughan were at work for six months or more, and there may have been other agents whose letters have not been preserved. The appearance of Bedyll in East Anglia, signalized by a couple of letters, shows that at least one other agent was busy. Bedyll toured the Fens and at Ramsey lighted upon a royal charter from Saxon times which suggested to him that the abbot and convent of the Confessor's day had accepted the royal supremacy,4 while at Croyland he came upon 'a young fool... not past fifteen, who is every day new to the hearer'. He proposed,therefore, that since 'the king's fool is getting old', the brethren should be deprived of their enjoyment in the royal interest, adding that' though I am 1 LPy x, 183 (to Cromwell): 'Your injunctions can have no effect in Durham Abbey in some things; for there was never yet woman in the abbey further than the church, nor they [i.e. the monks] never come within the town.' 2 Ibid, ix, 708. 3 Ibid. 632. Readers of R. H. Benson's novel, The King's Achievement, will remember the vivid scene at Lewes. 4 Ibid, x, 103. He adds: *good notes might be gathered out of this'.

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made of such heavy matter that I have small delectation in fools, he is one of the best I have heard'.1 Hitherto, throughout the autumn, the visitors had rambled in a somewhat aimless fashion about the country. A change came towards the end of December, when Cromwell decided to send Layton and Legh on the mission which the former had solicited some months earlier. They were therefore directed to make contact at Lichfield and to go together to the northern parts.The northern tour began about the turn of the year, and before the end of February, Legh and Layton, working sometimes apart but more often in double harness, had visited at least 121 religious houses and covered well over one thousand miles, and that in northern counties, over heather, stream and bog, in the short days and clinging mists of winter. During that time they had passed down Trentside, threaded Sherwood and its heaths, visited the houses that lay thick in the Vale of York, circled the East Riding and penetrated the Dales, reaching Bamburgh on the coast of Northumberland and Blanchland hidden in the moors where Northumberland and Durham meet. Returning south at least as far as Richmond, they then took the fork at Scotch Corner and made for Barnard Castle. Thence it is possible that one of them rode up Teesdale between the high fells and so down the Eden valley to Armathwaite and Lanercost, while the other passed into the Vale of Westmorland and so across to Shap. In any case, they were together at Carlisle, and thence passed along the coasts of Cumberland and Lancashire, with a detour to Whalley and Sawley, ending up in late February at Combermere and Chester. So ended Cromwell's visitation of the monasteries. Events were already in train in London that would make it, within a matter of weeks, ancient history. We must, however, look at it a little more closely, for it is, in the last analysis, by the findings of these visitors that writers in the past have, with whatever reservations, judged the monks. First, as regards its completeness, it may be remarked that several districts are without any record of visitation. Thus Lincolnshire, particularly rich in religious houses, was apparently not covered; many of the monasteries of Leicestershire, Warwickshire, north Worcestershire, Shropshire and Herefordshire seem to have escaped; and there are other isolated pockets of land which the visitors did not touch, unless we suppose others to have been at work who left even less trace in the records than Bedyll. Secondly, there is the speed with which the visitation was accomplished. Endeavours have recently been made to show that the visitors were scarcely more expeditious than certain bishops and other prelates in the past,* but no one can read the letters of the Cromwellian visitors and 1 LP, x, 181.

2 In particular by Mr Warren Sandell, who composed the two appendices to vol. 4 of Coulton's Five Centuries of Religion. Even granted that the assumptions there made on somewhat slight evidence (e.g. for the separate itineraries of Layton and Legh) are valid, the conclusion, that the average daily mileage covered by the two visitors, viz. 17 miles,

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follow their itinerary on the map without receiving an impression of haste, and the arguments against this impression are not convincing. Though bishops and their commissaries may have been speedy at times, no diocesan bishop ever covered in a single tour the distance travelled by Legh and Layton in the north, and the longer the distance, the greater the difficulty of maintaining the pace. As for the two Premonstratensian prelates, whose itineraries can more fairly be compared with the northern tour, they were following a familiar routine and a familiar itinerary, and were dealing with a single type of religious, those of their own order, while Redman, at least, knew intimately from long experience every house and almost every religious. Moreover, their responsibility was in a sense less, and their procedure different. On the one hand, bishops and their officials often accepted without question a unanimous omnia bene, whereas the Henrician visitors were searching for discreditable information by which the house might be ruined once and for all; moreover, both Redman and earlier bishops often adjourned their visitation, especially when the charges were serious, and reconsidered the whole affair at leisure. On any showing, a visitation which was to decide the fate of all the religious in the country should in justice have been conducted with unusual deliberation and care. Indeed, whether the ostensible purpose of the visitation, viz. serious reform, or its real purpose, the amassing of incriminating evidence, is considered, the speed achieved will seem to show a total lack of principle. The principal offenders were Layton and Legh, particularly in their tour of the north, but even as early as 26 September, Layton could write to Cromwell one Sunday from Waverley that on the following day he intended to go to Chichester, more than thirty miles distant over Hindhead, 'despatching by the way.. .a priory of nuns and canons close together', 1 and he fulfilled his intention. Shulbrede and Essebourne (at least five miles apart) were doubtless small houses, but on any showing this was quick work. This despatch was in fact made possible only by a rigorous economy of words and a blunt directness in the interrogation of the inmates. Both the letters and the comperta of the visitors indicate that, after getting a general impression of the financial state of the house (for which, it may be, they could use the figures of the Valor as a control) and after making a shrewd and realist estimate of the superior's character, they restricted their enquiries to personal interrogatories of the monks on a few points (for they cannot have used the whole questionnaire) and a brief search for is not notably more than the average of about 13 m.p.d. covered by five other earlier visitation rounds of comparable length, does not seem very strong. A daily addition of four miles for two months is considerable, and the Cromwellian visitors examined five or six times as many communities as the prelates with whom they are compared. Above all, there is the extremely serious (alleged) purpose of the visitation. If it was really the purpose of the visitors to bring about a thorough reform, why this haste? The waters of Shiloh run softly. 1 LP, ix, 444.

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objects and practices that could be labelled as superstitious. Thus, on 7 August, Layton wrote from the cathedral priory of Bath: We have visited Bath, and found the prior a very virtuous man, but his monks mo